Icy Fairy
by AUehara
Summary: What is worse than to have an unrequited love for a dense flame-head, be the unrequited love of a lion celestial spirit, the younger sibling figure of a protective ice-bastard, a teen and adult male AND female idol and be resurrected as a memory-less super powerful young woman? Possibly be all that and have to deal with an immortal dark mage on top of it all.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello, everybody!**

**... I shouldn't be here... You know those people with hyperactive imagination? Yeah, I'm one of those and already have a Digimon fanfiction in process of writing so why am I here?!... Oh well…**

**Okay! On with the babbling about the story!**

**The first and most important thing I need to make clear is that I had about six stories that inspired me into writing it. Did I copy them? Maybe some will see as that, but I swear I don't mean to disrespect anyone! To prove it, here are the stories that inspired me: One shot (by DreamscomeTRUEEE), Reason For Demise (by darklight1735), Recollection (by darklight1735), What We Should Be (by Unsugar), Worth the Wait (by Wild Rhov) and Ice Prince (which's author I can't remember nor find). If there is any other story that DOES NOT have Lucy or Juvia as part of the main couple, that has any resemblance with this one, then it is possible I have read it and like an aspect or other and wanted to use it. By the way, if you haven't read any of those fanfictions, I do suggest you do. They are awesome and most of them I keep re-reading every time I can.**

**Second important thing is that I don't like Lucy. I do respect her as a character, I do respect the people that like her, I do recognize her strength, but I just don't like her, at all. So you can expect some Lucy-bashing here though I will try to keep it to a minimum. **

**Third, as you can already realize, it is a yaoi/boys love story, so if it does not appeal you or insults you, please do turn back and everyone will go their happy way.**

**Fourth, there is gender-bending here, temporary character-death and lots of OOC. I won't go further into explaining it or I'll spoil the surprises. **

**And lastly! Disclaimer: _Fairy Tail does not belong to me. It's rightfully Hiro Mashima's creation and I take no profit of it. Nor do I own any song depicted along the chapters, they all belong to the rightful artist, company and producers and all that jazz… _There may be some minor character that are my creation, but that's it… **

**For those not familiar with the song of this chapter, here you can take a look at the official music video of it: www. youtube watch?v=IsXB5eRMRno&list=RDIsXB5eRMRno&index=1 (naturally, take off the spaces)**

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><p><strong>01 – Trap <strong>_**by Henry (feat. Taemin & Kyuhyun)**_

_Ice blocks were falling everywhere. The ice made floor of the cave was beyond walkable, being cracked and moving at every new wave of energy shot from the crater created by the demon. Happy watched helpless from the now closed entrance of the cave as Natsu struggled to get to his feet, fortunately not bothered by his motion sickness. Not too far from the dragon slayer was Gray, whose legs were trapped in the ice blocks from the broken floor and most likely useless at the moment as well. At some more distance from them, was Lucy, who just fell on the ice again, having lost her footing. _

_Then he yelled._

"_Gray! Lucy!" _

_At the same time, a piece of ice fell from the cave ceiling right onto Lucy and a beam shot from the crater straight at Gray. _

_On impulse and by logic of who's closer, Natsu shot at Gray and grabbed him by the waist, yanking the ice mage from the ice floor just in time before the beam hit any of them. Recovering from the sudden action, Gray created an ice dome covering the crater and turned to where their female companion was. _

"_Lucy!" Natsu turned to where the blonde was last seen beneath the ice chunks but turned back to the ice mage._

"_But your legs!"_

"_Just go! I'll be fine!" Gray pushed his friend and immediately the dragon slayer bolted to help Lucy. Happy came flying then and was shocked to see the state his legs were in. Smashed, was the only way he could describe it, smashed and bent in too many places from mid-tight and lower._

"_Gray!"_

"_Happy!" the raven hair looked up to the cat, emergency overflowing in both pairs of eyes. Happy meant to help him up, but Gray interrupted him. "Go see how Lucy is and help her and Natsu out!"_

"_But-!"_

"_Go, Happy! I'm the only one who can finish this thing anyway!"_

_Nodding hesitantly, Happy flew to the pair. Natsu had just finished digging Lucy out and had the girl cradled in his arms. _

"_How is Lucy?" the cat asked taking a look at her._

"_She's alive" he answered. In his arms, Lucy was trying to hold back tears and screams of pain, holding the left shoulder tightly, but still alive enough and pretty much awake. "Possibly only the shoulder out of place of major injury."_

"_Good. Gray said to get out. He's gonna try to do something about the demon."_

"_But in the condition he is-!"_

"_I'm good, flame head!" the ice mage appeared beside the group and did a quick scan over Lucy. At least she was still in one piece, good. "You and Happy take Lucy out of here. The cave is about to crash completely."_

"_And how do you want us to get out?! If you haven't noticed, there is no way out!" Natsu argued only to have Gray answer with a smirk._

"_And when has that ever stopped us?" as soon as he said that, he took a step back and canon blasted the nearest wall, efficiently making a tunnel to the outside world where the sky was still light. "Go!" _

_Happy needn't be told twice, he flew in a straight line outside. Natsu made sure his hold on Lucy wouldn't damage her more and took a step forward, stopping just as he realized something. "Aren't you coming?"_

"_I'll be out soon enough. Let me just finish this shit first" the ice mage turned away and faced the crater._

"_Do us a favor and don't die, got it, frostbite!"_

"_Yeah, yeah. Leave it to me."_

_Natsu then rushed through the crumbling tunnel and caught up with Happy. After they got a safe distance from danger, they managed to make Lucy open her eyes and respond to them, just to make sure she was still there. Then, the cave they were in not two minutes before crumbled completely and a giant spear of ice rose from the cold floor, on its tip was the form of the demon they were fighting. A second later and the monster broke into tiny pieces before falling and be carried away by the wind._

_A moment of realization and they ran to the now calm plain, personal pain put aside and eyes focused looking out for their missing friend. _

_A faint breeze blew through them and brought with it a scent very much familiar for the dragon slayer, but one he didn't like at all, the scent of the first snow fall deeply mixed with blood. Natsu doubled his speed and left Lucy and Happy to catch up by themselves. Arriving at a certain point, he started digging. Just as the other two arrived he found what he was looking for. Or part of it._

_Lucy's good hand left her shoulder to go to her mouth. Happy fell lightly to the floor, tears streaming down his blue fur. And Natsu only stared wide eyed, hands shaking. _

_In the shallow hole, was a pair of pale and strong legs that went from feet to mid tights. The combat boots and ripped pants' legs were covered in blood, quick cooling blood that spread out painting the ice and snow around deep crimson. And nothing else._

"_No…" a sob escaped the blonde before she fell to her knees and started crying out loud, Happy joining her._

"_You bastard!" Natsu sobbed and punched the bloody ice. "I told you not to die! Are you that stupid?! Can't you even do that?!"_

"_Who the hell are you calling stupid, retarded ash brains!"_

_At once, the three wailing friends looked up, stunned by the angry familiar voice. _

_In front of them, stood Gray, shirtless, hair half covered in snow and blood running down from many shallow wounds all over his body. The pants were ripped little higher than the knees, and the rest of his legs were transparent with a bluish tint._

"_Gray! You're alive!" Lucy screamed with tears still falling down her cheeks._

"_Of course I am alive! You think that was enough to kill me?" Gray asked, raising an eyebrow at her._

"_But your legs!" Happy yelled flying over said limbs pointing at them, fur bristled._

"_Ah, that? They were useless after Natsu pulled me out of the ice. And since we had to finish this problem, I got rid of them. This was a trick Ur used when she saved me. Pretty neat, huh!" he said with a grin, like the current situation was the most common in the world._

_Then Natsu punched him on the face. "YOU BASTARD!" And proceed to hug the ice mage before he fell, pulling him the closest possible to his chest, burring his face on the dark hair. "Never scare me like that again."_

Small sharp eyes blinked quickly and repeatedly. Charlie looked around and got her bearing. She was in the hall of Fairy Tail guild, sitting on the table in front of Wendy, who was talking to Erza animatedly. The other mages were scattered around talking, drinking and being loud like usual.

With a sigh, the queencat dropped her gaze to her lap. A vision, most likely, she thought, and a very gory one at that. At least no one died on it, she reasoned.

Deciding not to worry about it, the cat turned to her best friend and tried to catch up to their talk. But not a minute later, she felt rather than saw, many members stop on what they were doing, frown and continue with their activities. Following their example, she did the same, but still noted which mages had that reaction, they were Wendy, Erza, Kana, Juvia, Gajeel, Master, the Raijinshu and Laxus.

Five days earlier

Gray groaned when waking up, feeling his back and neck sore like after another Grand Magic Games, then he remembered it was just another hangover, as usual. He rubbed his eyes and tried to get up, being stopped by something holding his middle. After another try, he gave up and eyed what has keeping him and stared.

In front of his eyes was skin, lightly tanned and smooth skin covering hard packs of muscles. Feeling how warm it was, he knew instantly who it was, and the possessive yet gentle way the arm draped over him gave it away as well.

"Loke, wake up already. You are stinking of alcohol" Gray murmured stretching as much as he could, somehow resembling a cat, much for the irony of the situation.

In response, the other male grumbled and tightened his hold on the young man and buried his face on the dark locks, finding it too comfortable having a cold body next to him at this summer time to wake up. Gray sighed at the other's attitude.

Loke, who was enjoying his sleep quite nicely, suddenly flew out of bed hugging his chest, where there was a bright red spot from the sudden blow of freezing air. "Gray!"

"Good morning to you too, Loke. And good to see you have at least your pants on" the dark-haired male greeted his friend and sat up, stretching his arms over his head.

The spirit stared at the young man in slight disbelief. "How come you are that energetic this morning if you drank that much last night?"

"To the point I actually let you sleep in my bed with me?" he shrugged and got up, walking towards his bathroom completely nude, not that he noticed nor that he cared. It wasn't like Loke hadn't seen him naked before anyways. "After a while you get used to it, you know."

"That is quite the depressing thought, you know?" the blonde said while walking to the living room, looking for his lost shirt.

"Like I'm not a depressing person" Gray rolled his eyes. Before he closed the bathroom door, he turned back to the spirit. "You going back to the Spirit World?"

"Yeah. Although I'm still good, and I bet my hangover is better than yours, I rather be prepared if anything was to happen to Lucy and she needs me. But Gray… Are you going to be okay?" Loke asked worriedly.

The ice mage looked at his best friend in the eyes and gave him a constrained smile. "Not really, but I'll manage. I always do. Go rest. And thanks for the company last night."

"You know you can always count on me for anything. See you later" Loke gave him a small but sincere smile and vanished to the Spirit World.

Gray turned, closed the door and proceeded with his daily routine, all the while ignoring the pounding in his head. During his cold morning shower, he thought back to the events that led to his earlier predicament.

The night before, he had a date with Natsu, one of those rare and real dates they had lately. They were supposed to meet by the dry riverside at nine in the night. The ice mage arrived ten minutes earlier and laid on the grass, passing his time by stargazing and creating imaginary drawing with the constellations, trying to associate the stars positions to the celestial spirits and how much they didn't resemble one another, at all.

About an hour later, Gray decided to look for the fire dragon slayer and give him a little lesson about punctuality. He went to the other's house first and found him there alright, and in a situation he had imagined as an option before. The house was unusually cleaned. Happy was nowhere to be found. And Natsu was in bed with Lucy, with all the lights out and very concentrated on their current activities.

Gray bit down his lip to hold back any other external reaction and watched the couple for ten seconds before turning his back and heading back home. When he arrive at the stony way to the front door of his house – a pretty nice three store building, large enough to occupy two thirds of Fairy Tail's guild area with the best playground/park like backyard at the outskirts of Magnolia – he picked a small sphere-like silver device he always kept with him and pushed a little button on it.

Five minutes later, he had his living room table prepared with three bottles of different liquors, two clean scotch glasses and two shot glasses ready and filled with an alcoholic drink, this time's choice being one of his favorites vodkas he only drank with either Lyon or Loke. The lion spirit arrived to that scene and raised an eyebrow to his friend's position half sitting half lying on the floor by the couch's feet.

"Sorry for calling you on such short notice and for something as stupid as a drink's night to cover another of my depression fits. But would you terribly mind making me company?" Gray had asked and Loke accept.

They drank the shots of vodka, a bottle of whiskey and a glass each of the other two bottles. In the middle of the drinking, clothes were lost and the males stumbled to the bed. No real intimate contact made at all, constrained by sheer self-control from both parties.

Yes, that was pretty much it. What a ridiculous situation, Gray thought.

Gray has been in love with Natsu for way too long now and recently (in their perspective) Natsu decided he wanted someone else but kept Gray around, in his ignorance keeping the ice mage tied to him. Then when it became too much for Gray to take it quietly, he'd call either Loke or Lyon or both for a night of drinking until he was too numb to feel his heartache.

After getting dressed and ready for the day, Gray first stopped by the back of his house, the part of the building he had reserved to make an orphanage for all kind of children and teens until they were eighteen and if they chose to stay around they could work there as housekeepers and helpers and teachers for the young kids. That was one of the projects he had with Kana and Erza and was supported by Master Makarov, though the three of them took care of it by themselves with the employees of what has been dubbed The Icy-Steel-Card House.

On his way, the young man greeted the people going on about their routines until he came out to the backyard. There a group of small children was running around playing happily. Standing watch over them were two middle-aged ladies. He walked to them calmly.

"It always amazes me how they can be so energetic and cheerful so early in the morning" he said and greeted the pair, who chuckled at him.

"Gray-kun, it is ten in the morning" one of them replied laughing.

"Exactly! It's too early still."

They chatted for a couple minutes and then the ice mage said his good-byes and headed for the guild.

As usual, the Fairy Tail hall was blusterous with laughs and cheers for whatever reason those crazy mages could find. He easily spotted Wendy sitting with Kana, Charlie and Happy on a table close to the bar. Natsu and Lucy were sitting a little away from the other four at the same table, giving off waves of cheesy love, not that Natsu himself understood the concept. Gray ignored the couple and went to the girls and cats, sitting beside Wendy and putting an arm over her slim shoulders.

"Morning. Wendy, the ladies at the House asked when you are coming next. They said the kids miss your visits."

"Good morning, Gray-san. I will try to stop by one of these days" the young Dragon Slayer said smiling. Happy started to talk to them then and from time to time Lucy commented something or another.

It was some minutes later that Master Makarov came to the hall from his office and walked to their table. Clearing his throat, he addressed them.

"Gray, you have a new mission" the old man said calmly and the young man looked at him and smiled. A nominated mission now would probably mean a challenging quest, which would request a lot of his attention, which would take his mind away from Natsu and Lucy for as long as the mission took.

"Well, what is it about? I could use a hard mission at the moment."

"Well then, here are all the details about it", Makarov handled him a thin file, which the ice mage started to read right away still listening to the master, "but to sum it up, the request came from the Northern Country and is asking for a mage capable of defeating a demon that has been messing with the weather over there. And they specifically requested an ice mage."

"I'll go right after lunch then" Gray nodded and Master nodded back, accepting the younger's conditions.

The little man walked away and the whole table approached Gray while he was still going over the request's details. When Lucy looked, her eyes found a very nice and interesting number written before the word 'Reward' followed by some other things. She nudged Natsu on the ribs and pointed that to him, both developing suspicious glints in their eyes.

Some hours later, after lunch and Gray leaving a message at home, he stood dumbfound at the train station staring at a fire dragon slayer and a celestial spirit mage, both with a traveling bag each, waving at him. Happy flew over to him before any mage said anything and floated in front of him.

"I tried to stop them, but Lucy was really insistent" the blue cat whispered. The ice mage sighed and turned back to staring at the other two humans.

"If you are hoping to get any part of the monetary reward by going, don't even bother. Unless you are anyhow useful, you are coming along for free" he deadpanned and turned to the right train stop.

"Like that is the only reason" Natsu rolled his eyes and followed. "Jii-chan said they requested a powerful mage to defeat a demon. So it's only natural I have to go."

"Yeah, right, like you will be any help here. And what is your excuse, Lucy?" Gray asked not bothering to face her.

The blonde huffed before replying. "Ever since the Grand Magic Games we haven't gone in a mission together as a team. I think this is the perfect opportunity" she said in a know-it-all manner.

"And that is why you didn't mention it to me or Wendy before nor waited for Erza, right? Whatever you say, don't get in the way" the ice mage finished and entered the train with Happy flying by him, leaving Lucy to deal with a motion sick Natsu behind.

During the three-day ride towards the North, Gray could only ask himself what he had done to deserve this. He woke up in a bad mood, changed it after talking to the caretakers of his house and now, when he thought he would have a rest from the 'unofficial' couple, they just had to tag along uninvited. Really, just great. At the very least, he got the satisfaction of seeing Natsu miserable from his motion sickness and a pissed off Lucy because of the dragon slayer's attitude.

They arrived at the station in a small town and after asking for some directions, the team proceed into the endless plains of snow. Natsu had a large coat over his usual attire and Lucy had probably four layers of winter clothes on her. Happy was gladly snuggled into Natsu's coat collar enjoying the natural warmth the dragon slayer gave off. Within two hours they arrived at the first village of the Region of Kotek, found an inn, settled their bags and went for a little information hunting, or rather, Gray and Happy went while Lucy and Natsu stayed at the inn, the girl stating she needed to warm up and the pink-haired guy more than happy to help her.

So ice mage and exceed walked around the village and the neighboring ones and soon towards the white plains, looking for their targets.

When they asked, the villagers said they had asked for help before, but none of the other mages that came could do as much as land a hit on the demon, but fortunately nobody has died, yet.

Almost everything about the target has been found out already. It was an intelligent monster capable of human speech. It went about 10 meters high and was large, body that looked like icy rocks with long arms and sharp fangs. It was living in a cave made in the half mile thick icy floor and once inside the demon's lair, not one type of magic used by previous mages proved useful, which turned out to be most kind of elemental and non-elemental. One could say that the whole nature has been tried on, from fire to water, earth and air, light, shadow, poison, take-overs, re-quips and spirits. Everything was tested. Except ice magic.

Records stated that the magic was useless not because it didn't affect the demon. It wasn't nearly as good as that. What happened was that the closer a mage got to the monster, their energy literally left their bodies and got absorbed by the creature. Their magic just wouldn't work, not even the most basic of spells, the mages stated it was like having lost your magic completely to the point you won't even feel it within, like you never even had it to begin with.

Therefor trying a last shot, a mage capable of powerful and experienced ice magic was requested. And so it came to the current situation.

Walking apparently aimlessly, Gray and Happy had but snow and ice and rock surrounding them on and on and on. The cat had buried himself into Gray's coat and the mage mindfully kept his clothes on. They looked around and had yet to find anything to indicate the cave the demon resided in.

"Nah, Gray" Happy called quietly, still keeping his eyes out for anything that could pass as a cave.

"What is it, Happy?" Gray asked almost absentmindedly.

"Are you mad we tagged along?"

The ice mage took a moment to answer, which made the cat look at him. "I sincerely hoped to use this mission as a time out from those two, yes, but I don't mind you."

Happy beamed and returned to his task, helping his friend. "We could always just kick Lucy out of her clothes and leave her out here."

"Nah, that would be mean, even for us" he snickered and went on searching.

A while later, they found it: an opening in the snow ground large enough for six grown men to pass comfortably. The pair smiled at each other and went into the hole. Entering just enough to see what was inside, they found the cave bare of anything. Literally. The place consisted of only ice walls, ice floor, a big hole in the middle of the floor and nothing more, it was like a big hall empty of any decoration, including the usual stalagmites and stalactites were absent. Wanting to make the most of this trip at once, Gray also tried his magic, after all, what use would he have here if his magic didn't work either. So he did a basic ice shield form and was delighted to know that yes, ice magic did work here. Seems like the opponent being an ice demon cancelled all magic but ice natured. Well, good for him.

Satisfied, he and Happy turned and went back to the inn they were staying at, taking their time at doing so.

They arrived at the inn late in the night and expected to find both Natsu and Lucy asleep, but were surprised to meet the dragon slayer awake waiting for them in their room. After the door was closed, Happy flew to the bed unoccupied by the young man and fell asleep in two heartbeats, leaving Gray and Natsu alone in the night. The ice mage half ignored his friend and went to change clothes, aware of the other's stare on his back.

"If you want to say something, just do it" Gray said tiredly still facing away from the other.

"It's about that night. I'm sorry I didn't come. Something urgent came up and I totally forgot about it at the time" Natsu replied looking away from the other mage and sounding as apologetically as he could, which, in Gray's ears, wasn't all that convincing, but that may be because he knows the dragon slayer too well.

Having finished changing into a simple pair of sweatpants, Gray turned to look at Natsu, face blank except for a raised eyebrow. "And you expect me to be mad at that? I already knew your burnt pea brain wouldn't remember our date. So don't even bother apologizing."

Immediately, Natsu rose to the provocation and flared his fists. "What the fuck, ice block! I'm trying to apologize with all my heart and you go brushing it off like nothing!"

_With all your heart, really?, _Gray thought and hold back spitting the words. "Like I said, Natsu, don't even bother. Besides, don't you have your hands full already with Lucy?"

"Tsc. You are really stupid, Gray."

Then Natsu tackled the ice mage down and dragged him onto bed. They started kissing and soon clothes were thrown away and the males were engrossed in a heated session of sex, not once keeping their sounds low.

All the while, Happy slept like a rock beside them.

The next morning, Gray awoke to a cold bed. Not thinking about it, he went through his daily routine and found his three teammates having breakfast at the cafeteria. As expected, Natsu and Lucy were snuggling together and Happy was munching on a fresh fish delighted. He ignored the slight pang of pain that shot through his chest and joined them, telling them the plan for the day and about his and Happy's findings the day before. He suggested the three of them stay at the inn, but the idea was shot down immediately and Gray simply didn't have the energy to argue with them against their suicide wish.

Within some hours, then, the whole group was out on their way towards the demon's lair. Gray with Happy nestled in his coat's furred hood was walking ahead. Natsu and Lucy were some paces behind, the girl practically needing to be dragged by the Dragon Slayer while she shivered under her layers of clothes. Between Lucy's complaints and Natsu's bickering with Gray, they arrived at the same place the ice mage and exceed found the day before. Once again Gray told the others to stay back, but their stubbornness was too strong and they went in the cave first.

The dark-haired mage sighed and followed them, preparing his magic to shoot anytime. He saw Natsu and Lucy preparing their magic as well and only waited for when they would realize their magic didn't work in this place. It didn't take long.

The group hadn't taken five steps into the cave and a blizzard started. Happy and Lucy started to scream immediately and Natsu and Gray braced themselves for anything, the fire mage, only then, noticing how his flames wouldn't come out. For a split moment, he forgot the situation and that they were about to face a demon but then the immediate danger hit him and he sprung into action.

"Get out, filthy humans! Just leave me alone!" the demon screeched, but was ignored by the mages, by Gray at least.

He charged towards the form coming out of the center on the cave, ice blades ready while he left Happy and Lucy's safety in Natsu's care, knowing that at least his quick reflexes and raw strength were still intact and useful to keep them alive for a while. For a while, he successfully landed many hits on the demon, but the monster didn't just stand there, even if his attacks didn't hit the ice mage or any other, the cave took the damage and was starting to fall apart.

Soon the floor no longer was plan. It had cracked and started to move, like rouge pieces of icebergs about the sea in a storm. The ceiling was in no better shape, with pieces of it falling every time either Gray or the demon attacked.

In a surprising lucky strike, Happy found out he could use his aerial magic, and was flying around, dodging all potential harmful things coming his way. Lucy and Natsu, on the other hand, had long lost their bearings and balance, hardly avoiding falling into icy holes or being covered by frozen rocks.

Meanwhile, Gray made sure to keep the demon's attention on him only. It was bad luck that Natsu suddenly landed some meters behind him when the monster was throwing another wave of ice blades, forcing the ice mage to create a shield in front of them both and pray that Lucy was down on the floor and not impaled by any of the projectiles. Unfortunately for him, the force of the impact made the ice he was standing on give in and break so suddenly Gray didn't have time get away, thus making him fall into the crack. And just as suddenly, the ice crashed back together and not only trapped Gray in its middle, but smashed his legs.

The young man felt the instant pain shot through his body from his legs and couldn't help but let out a painful roar, drawing Natsu's and Happy's attention.

With ice blocks falling everywhere, Happy watched helpless from the now closed entrance of the cave as Natsu struggled to get to his feet, fortunately not bothered by his motion sickness. Not too far from the dragon slayer was Gray, whose legs were trapped in the ice blocks from the broken floor and most likely useless at the moment as well. At some more distance from them, was Lucy, who just fell on the ice again, having lost her footing.

Then he yelled.

"Gray! Lucy!"

At the same time, a piece of ice fell from the cave ceiling right onto Lucy as a beam shot from the crater straight at Gray.

Acting on sheer impulse, Natsu forced his legs to work and shot himself at Lucy, managing to cover her with his body just in time before the ice hit her. The girl noticed him and he made sure she was alright, but he didn't see a laser beam pierce Gray's chest over his heart or the sequential ice spear hitting his head, going through it and turning his head to the scene of a safe Lucy and barely scratched Natsu taking care of each other. It was only after Happy's desperate yell the pair turned to their other teammate.

When Gray felt the shot go through his chest, the feeling of déjà vu hit him and he remembered that one minute Urtear had given the world back, when those small dragons killed him. When the first spear went through his head, there was no pain, not physical at least, but the sight of his friends unharmed and safe gave him a contradictory sense of relief that they were safe and of great betrayal that after the last night, Natsu still gave him certain death over Lucy's possibly grave injury. The following six stabs weren't felt, his fading conscience was glued to his friends. When a large beam encased his whole body, he didn't have any more conscious thought, but something in him snapped and felt like was awakened. This strange something merged itself with the demon's body and imploded before exploding and sending a massive wave of energy at all directions.

The only thing Natsu and Lucy saw was Gray's silhouette fading inside a large beam before a large explosion blew everyone and thing away.

When Natsu came to, he was half buried in snow. Sitting up, all he saw around him was endless plain of snow, Lucy in the same state of half-burial beside him and Happy and Loke and Virgo looking around, searching for something.

"Loke? Virgo? What are you guys doing here? Is Lucy-"

"Hime is fine, she is just unconscious" Virgo answered in her monotone voice. "Both Leo-sama and I came here using our own magic" she said and turned to dig around the snow again, not giving Natsu a second to reply.

He shrugged her weird attitude and kneeled beside Lucy.

"Hey, Lucy, wake up or you'll die of hypothermia. Come on, wake up already!" he kindly turned her to face down, heated his hand and put it on her butt. The response was immediate. She shot up and slapped the dragon slayer.

"What the hell, Natsu! What was that for!" she shrieked, but soon got her bearings. The empty landscape sent a shiver through her that had nothing to do with the cold. The frantic way Happy and Loke were looking around made her even more anxious… Wait. Loke? "Loke, what are you doing here?" she asked raising her voice and walking towards the spirit with Natsu.

The ginger haired man turned to look at the pair for a moment but soon turned back to his searching, still he answered before walking away, "We are looking for Gray."

Those words hit the pair hard. They remembered in a sudden flow of images the last thing they saw before losing consciousness and joined the others in the search for their missing friend.

They spent many minutes shouting out for the ice mage and digging randomly around. It was Virgo's shout that changed the mood.

"Leo-sama! I found something!"

Loke, Happy, Natsu and Lucy bolted towards the maid spirit's voice and found her in a hole that she probably dug herself. Joining her, they quickly took notice of some parts of the ice that had red spots in it and small torn pieces of what looked like clothes, a dark pieces of fabric, more precisely, at the exact color of the pants Gray was using before.

While Natsu, Lucy and Happy looked around confused, the pink-haired spirit approached her leader and extended her hand, holding on her palm a small silver sphere. "Leo-sama, this is what I found actually. It's the bell you gave Gray-san years ago, right?"

The lion spirit froze then and there. Gray never left that sphere behind. It was one of the most curious facts about the ice mage Loke knew. No matter how much the guy stripped, he never once lost the object since the lion gave him it the year before Lucy joined Fairy Tail, when he made the promise to be Gray's partner at the S-Class Promotion Exam. Which could only mean Gray was not around anymore.

Loke took the silver piece and a familiar sad voice echoed in his mind.

_I'm sorry. I wasn't strong enough._

Gripping the sphere impossibly tight and with his face down, Loke addressed his friends, "Go home. There's nothing else to be done here."

Both Natsu and Lucy snapped their heads at the spirit's words and stared at him wide-eyed. Happy just sat on the snow atop the hole's opening staring at nothing with ears flattened to his head. Natsu narrowed his eyes dangerously suddenly and steam started to come off his body. Grabbing Loke's collar, he raised him a little, wanting to look him face to face.

"What the fuck do you mean with that! Are you saying we should just forget about Gray, leave him behind and head back home to Magnolia?!" Natsu shouted at the top of his lungs. "Answer me, you bastard! Have you forgotten the meaning of nakama? Have you forgotten the meaning of Fairy Tail?! Huh!"

"Have you?" Loke replied dangerously quiet before raising his face to look Natsu in the eyes, and the dragon slayer was taken aback by what he saw.

The Celestial Spirit was biting down his lip so strongly the skin broke and a thin trail of blood ran down his chin. Fat tears were coming down his blue eyes and his eyes just screamed 'frustration and lost'.

"Face it, Natsu, he isn't around anymore. If he was, you would be able to smell him. Can you?" Loke asked him coldly.

Natsu released his friend and turned to sniff the air. There was the faintest trail of Gray's scent around them and he noted it must have been the blood in the ice from when the black-haired man got himself trapped by his legs. He got out the hole and sniffed some more. He knew that even under some layers of snow, he would still be able to smell somebody's scent. What he found sent shivers down his spine. There was nothing. He got trails from the wandering Lucy, Happy and Loke did and even Virgo's digging, but there was nothing from Gray.

Slowly he turned back to his friends, noting Virgo wasn't with them anymore, probably she was back at the Celestial Spirit World. Loke helped Lucy up and then turned to Natsu. The two males stared at each other before the lion spirit looked away and just disappeared. Then Lucy and Natsu looked at each other.

What could they do now?

For the next four days, the two mages still tried to search for their missing friend. That day, when they went back to the inn at nightfall, they told the people in the village what had transpired and everyone agreed to help as appreciation for their work at getting rid of the demon. Still, they didn't find anything at all. Loke refused to be called and whenever Lucy tried, one of the other Elliptical Zodiac Spirits would appear, saddened and only to deliver the message that "Leo-sama doesn't want to talk. If he is needed to fight, he'll know" and disappear.

At the end of the fourth day, the villagers told the mages to go back home. No one could survive any longer in the snow but they would continue to search some more and if they found anything, Fairy Tail would be the first to know. Very reluctantly, they agreed. The reward was practically shoved onto their hands, but they agreed it would go entirely to the guild, after all, they did nothing there, it wouldn't be fair on Gray if they took what was rightfully his for themselves.

The trip back to Magnolia was a very silent one, except for Natsu's gurgling. When they arrived home, the weather was awfully bright, it was a perfect day for a trip to the beach. It was all wrong. They quietly made their way from the train station to Fairy Tail and hesitated for a moment before entering the guild's halls.

As usual, it was energetic and full of merry mages. The trio heard Mirajane's greetings, but they didn't have the energy to answer her. Instead, Happy floated to the table Charlie was sharing with Wendy, Panther Lily, Kana and Erza, and flopped beside his fellow exceeds. Lucy numbly walked to the same table and dropped herself on a free spot. Lastly, Natsu ignored everybody's staring just as his partners and made his way towards Master, who was a table after the girls and cats.

Makarov eyed curiously how his three children looked dead. He was even more curious when the dragon slayer put his backpack down and took a package out of it and silently handed it to the old man.

"Natsu, Lucy, Happy, where is Gray?" Erza asked confused, looking at her three friends after a moment when she realized Gray was not going to come through the doors late. "You guys went with him at that mission, right? Where is he?"

There was a pin drop silence following her question and dread filled her and many other mages, Master among them. The little man then looked Natsu's face carefully and only found the young man in an automatic state. Understanding he wasn't going to get much more from him, Makarov decided to open the package Natsu handed him. It was the full monetary reward from the mission he sent Gray to twelve days before. Dread settled in, he slowly turned to the fire mage and asked firmly, "What happened?"

Natsu didn't answer. Lucy flinched before starting to sob. It was Happy who answered in a very small voice.

"It happened really fast. One moment we were trying to stand up and the next Lucy almost got crushed by a falling part of the cave's ceiling if it wasn't for Natsu covering her and Gray was trapped by his legs and a beam shot at him. Then he was gone. The only thing left of him was some drops of blood on the ice. Not even the demon's cave was there. Gray is just gone."

X781, December – Magnolia, Fiore

Unceremoniously, Kana dropped a barrel of beer and three mugs in front of Gray and Loke, who were sulking and reading a notebook respectively, before taking a seat at the other side of the ice mage. At the other side of the table, Laxus sat with Freed, Bickslow and Evergreen, each with a cup of their preferred drink.

"First, cheer up, Gray, or your face is going to be permanently twisted into that frown if you continue. Second, what is Loke reading?" the brunette girl said, filling the three mugs and handing one to each boy and keeping one to herself.

"First, if my face hasn't twisted from me training in a blizzard, it won't ever, Kana. Second, Loke insisted on reading my scribbles" Gray answered his best female friend and took a sip of the alcoholic drink. "Also, I'm sorry it didn't happen this year either. I know how bad you want to be S-class."

At his words, the girl smiled sadly and tapped his mug with hers. "Well, it couldn't be helped. Not only were we against a she-demon, literally, but we also had the monster Erza and this stupid spark-head here as opponents on the way."

The dark-haired boy smiled at her and they drank, ignoring the twitching eyebrow on Laxus' face and the snickers from his three 'bodyguards'. "Fair enough. But I promise you, I am going to help you become S-class even if I get there first" he grinned and waited for her reaction, which came right after.

"Like a brat like you could become S-class before me!"

"We have the same age, you crazy girl!"

"Yeah, but don't you know, us girls do grow up far before you guys do, you cold ass!"

"Like hell you do!"

"Oh, come on! Stop that already and drink up, kids!" Laxus exclaimed from across the table and wacked them both on the head, earning glares and stunk tongues from the dark-haired pair and laughs from his three followers.

Before a three-way discussion started between the group of friends, Loke spoke up, putting the notebook down and taking his beer. "You should give life to these pieces soon, Gray. They are really good!"

"We told you, Gray!" Evergreen happily said pointing to the boy.

On the other hand, the ice mage looked away from them and murmured behind his mug something like 'It's not that good' and 'I would look ridiculous' that his friends shook their heads to. Kana took the notebook then and started to read the last written pages, raising her eyebrows in the process.

"Damn, Gray, this new one is pretty awesome. Quite heavy too. Even after these three years you still fell like this?" Gray just shrugged in response to her questioning. Over him, Kana saw the frown on Loke's face and sighed herself along with the Raijinshuu. These boys were a lost cause.

She then looked away from her sulking friend and took in the rest of the guild. Everyone was partying, celebrating Mirajane's promotion to S-class Mage. Her siblings were extremely happy for her. Erza was picking a fight with the she-demon. Lisanna was with Natsu on stage, performing a lovely winter song together and looking all lovey-dovey, though the pink-haired boy probably didn't even notice it from how dense he is. Kana sweat-dropped before having a great idea.

"Hey, Gray" she called and all seven mages looked at her. "You want to make it up to me from this year's failure?" her cheerful tone put Gray on edge immediately and he even slid away from her and towards Loke behind him, carefully eyeing her.

"I don't like the way you put it and what do you have in mind?" he asked, already regretting he didn't take the most logic option of running away.

"This" she tapped the notebook, "perform this and I'll let you off of drinking for the whole night with me."

Loke felt Gray's body stiffen and he start to sweat, of course with him wearing only pants it was very easy to see, but his increasing breathing was becoming a little worrisome. Just a little. "I agree. You should perform it and kick that happy couple out of the stage. They got boring already."

"See, Gray" Freed said and the boy turned to him so quickly he wondered if he didn't snap anything in his neck, "we all agree you should perform your compositions. What's the use of you writing them and never bringing them to life?"

"Don't know. I just do them to relax and relieve myself from some stress and frustration."

"Just go up there and perform, Gray" the masked man said, threatening him to take the headpiece off and make him.

"Besides, I bet you'll get a lot more frustration and relief from performing than just creating them" Laxus added and Gray just knew he was cornered and his six friends would gang up against him until he complied.

"Fine, I'll do it. But don't expect anything good!"

"Okay!"

Growling, the dark-haired boy got up and walked towards the stage, doing his best to ignore his friends grinning faces. He talked to Lisanna to let him have a few minutes on the stage, almost started a fight with Natsu before the white-haired girl dragged him out and he stood facing his guild mates, all looking at him expectantly. Embarrassed, the boy scratched the back of his neck before addressing them.

"Okay, so… I'm not sure how well it'll be, so don't expect much. Also, I was forced to do it by those nasty friends over there" he pointed to the table he was sitting and received whistles and catcalls from them. "And lastly, it's just a little something I wrote on my free time."

Taking a deep breath, Gray focused on his magic and murmured "Ice make: Stage" and the whole stage was covered by ice. Some of the mages whistled impressed but they were silent, waiting. The boy walked to the back of the stage, almost out of it to the side and created a grand piano there. Positioning himself on the ice bench, he took another deep breath before pushing down on the keys. The following sound got everybody's undivided attention.

After a few seconds, an ice piece appeared on his face, from his right ear to his mouth, looking like a microphone, except it wasn't connected to anything, but had some holes to let the wind go through. And he murmured a single line before the other instruments on stage started to play by themselves.

_I'm trapped_

Faceless ice clones were formed around the piano and started to dance to the music's beat. Gray also got up on the piano, joining in the dance and the instrument continued to play by itself.

_I can't move, why am I getting heavier?  
>As I'm inside of the corner of your heart, yeah<br>I want to touch you but I'm in this black darkness  
>I keep settling down in this same place, in that place, yeah<br>I'm getting more and more forgotten inside of you  
>Inside this love that always lingers<br>Oh I'm trapped, I'm trapped_

The clones danced perfectly with the mage, like they were other people doing a thoroughly rehearsed choreography, and not once, despite the steps did Gray's voice falter.

_I'm getting tired, I guess I'm dreaming alone  
>Will you strongly shake me and wake me up, wake me up?<br>I'm trapped, I'm trapped_

_I'm losing myself, I can't even remember my name without you  
>Now will you let go of me from inside of you, let go of me?<br>I'm trapped, I'm trapped_

_I'm trapped, oh  
>I'm trapped, oh<em>

_You and I, we are becoming more different  
>In your endless greed, greed<br>I am an abandoned bird inside a small birdcage called you  
>I can't even fly away, yeah<br>I am getting more and more weak inside of you  
>Inside of this love that always lingers<br>Oh, I'm trapped, I'm trapped_

Somehow, the public noticed, Gray's voice got an echo effect and a double tone.

Most of the mage didn't notice, but his closest friends, the six he shared a table with plus Erza and Makarov saw the subtle changes on the stage's ice, how it would create some channels and how it would affect the sound waves. All in all, they thought the ice mage took too long to use this talent of his.

_I'm getting tired, I guess I'm dreaming alone  
>Will you strongly shake me and wake me up, wake me up?<br>I'm trapped, I'm trapped_

_I'm losing myself, I can't even remember my name without you  
>Now will you let go of me from inside of you, let go of me?<br>I'm trapped, I'm trapped_

I'm trapped, I'm trapped  
>I'm trapped, oh, I'm trapped yeah<p>

_I want to forget you (I want to forget you)  
>I want to fly away (I want to fly away)<br>I want to let go of you (I want to let go of you)  
>I want to be free (I want to be free)<em>

_I'm getting tired, I guess I'm dreaming alone  
>Will you strongly shake me and wake me up, wake me up?<br>I'm trapped, I'm trapped_

_I'm losing myself, I can't even remember me name without you  
>Now will you let go of me from inside of you, let go of me?<br>I'm trapped, I'm trapped  
>I'm trapped oh oohh<em>

Gray finished his performance slowly. One by one, the clones dissolved into thin air. He walked back to the grand piano and slowly the ice covering the stage melted. And until the last note, the piano stood strong like a crystal piece instead of ice. But as soon as he finished, the whole guild erupted in cheers, surprising him beyond belief.

Among the many compliments shouted at him, Kana's enthusiastic and drunk shout stood among all others.

"That's our Icy Fairy!"

* * *

><p><strong>NA time!**

**When I started writing this chapter (at the beginning of this year or last year, I believe), I never thought it would be this big. Seriously. There is the possibility of the next chapter following this length but it is also possible they will be smaller, I have no idea. Also, I don't know how often I'll be able to update due social life (yeah, I still try to have it) and writer's block whenever it hits me. So if I suddenly stop for too long, please bear with me. One day I will come back were it to happen.**

**About Gray's performance, try to imagine him and a bunch of ice clones with him, as well as him singing in the original language; I just put the lyrics translated here because I think it makes it more dynamic and easier to read, not to mention that would make a little more sense that everybody understands what's being sang. I had this idea ever since I read 'Ice Prince' (and I can't find this story in this site (yeah, I did read it here) for the life of me. I didn't like the story itself, I found it weak, but that is my opinion and I'm not saying it's bad. What I did like about it was the concept of Gray being an idol. And since recently I got myself entranced by this weird and marvelous world of K-pop, well, you probably already figured I'll use a lot of K-pop songs here. **

**Another point about these songs, if there is anyone out there reading this story that knows Korean and sees anything weird about the translations, please do PM me and tell me about it and I'll correct it ASAP. And just for the record, I took the lyrics from youtube fanmade videos and this site: www .kpoplyrics **

**Any other doubt, please to ask in reviews, and if there isn't any, just review either way because it's nice and writers always like to know what their readers think about their creations! ;D**

**~Atsuko Uehara, 23/November/2014.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello, Everybody!**

**We are back and before anything, I need to thank the people that reviewed and followed and favored this story! So, thank you so much: Alanna Darkfeather, AsDarknessSpreads, arairi, Rewinsan and sktrgrl13. I hope this chapter will also be of your liking.**

**Rereading the first chapter, I remembered something… Should I have put a Warning for violence, future sexual scenes, foul language, blood and dark sense of humor (no dark-humor though, just a twisted and morbid one)? Well… Heheh, my bad. Here it is then, but I'd consider it all kind of included in the M-rating…**

**Concerning this chapter, I think I have to make my opinion over another character clear: Lisanna. I have nothing against her, but I don't favor her either. She is one of those whatever-characters for me, because really, Natsu and Lucy kind of friendzone her every now and then, in the anime specially. I almost pity her… Almost. Besides, I don't see anything that special in her, not strength or character, so yeah, she's just there for me.**

**And lastly! This chapter's song can be heard here: www. youtube watch?v=PfOtieDrDkA**

**When I was looking for songs to put in this story and I listened to this one, I just though "It illustrates Fairy Tail perfectly!" And so I had to have it here. Hope you people like it too.**

**Now on with the story! Enjoy!**

* * *

><p><strong>02 – Hurricane <strong>_**by B.A.P.**_

X782 – Magnolia, Fiore

Gray arrived at the guild and sighed in annoyance. The gloomy atmosphere that had settled over them two weeks ago was so out of place it irritated him beyond belief.

For once, the mages were quiet. Elfman and Mirajane were huddled together at a table with Erza and Kana, these two girls trying to get a reaction from the siblings other than them blaming themselves for what happened. Natsu was another zombie-like person in the hall. As much as Happy was affected, he still tried to spur the dragon slayer into doing anything other than mop in the guild. The rest of them weren't that much better. Some went for minor jobs, but always went and came quietly, fearful they would disrupt the delicate state the Strauss siblings were in. To one side, the ice mage found the Raijinshuu with frowns on their faces. A little away from them, he saw his best friend, for once without any of his usual groupies.

With a tickling on his eye, he couldn't hold himself any longer.

"Lisanna is dead" he stated and coldly watched how most of his guild mates flinched. Some, his best friends, looked curiously at him. "Flashing news for you guys, just because she is not with us anymore, doesn't mean the world isn't spinning anymore, or that time has stopped, or that life lost its meaning" more flinching. "Now do everybody a favor and cut this crap!"

"What the fuck, Gray!" Natsu finally broke free from his dead state and glared at the ice mage, fists ablaze.

"That's what I should be asking you! Somebody dies and suddenly you have nothing to live for anymore?!"

"'Somebody'? Do you consider Lisanna just 'somebody' in your life, you bastard?"

Gray's dark-blue eyes hardened before he calmly replied. "Lisanna was as dear a friend of mine as she was to you. The only reason I can walk as lightly as I am about her demise is because I understood what she would want us to do as opposed to you guys having your heads so down in this funk it makes you blind and deaf to realize you are doing the exact opposite of what she would want."

"Like you know anything!" Mirajane suddenly yelled at the top of her lungs, voice strained by her crying. The white-haired girl glared at him with teary eyes, but that had no effect on the boy.

"I do" he murmured too low for anyone to hear, looking away for a moment before locking gazes with her again. "Is that what you think? Then do me a little favor and answer this: were you in her position now, would you want your beloved ones to sulk and stop living because you are dead?" he saw the siblings flinch along with Natsu and many other mages. To the side, he got a glimpse of Erza, Kana and Loke's smile at him. "I know for one, that if I were to die and found out you guys decided to mop around like this because of me, I would come back and beat the crap out of you all out of frustration. If I died, I'd want my family to live for me, not forget to live. Are you guys that stupid? For hell's sake, we are Fairy Tail! Nothing stops us! If a nakama is gone, we live for them what they couldn't!"

Sniffs to end crying all over the hall was heard. Elfman finally looked up and Mira got a new shine in her eyes. But Gray's eyes were now locked on Natsu's face. The pink-haired boy had yet to move, but the surprised look in his eyes told him that he was processing what was said. Unfortunately it would take a little too long if not helped by an outer force, thought the ice mage.

"Hey, flame brain!" and that did the trick of getting a reaction from the fire mage. "I bet you can't accompany me" and Gray proceed to make an ice stage out of the whole hall.

"Like hell I can't, frost bite! Bring it on!"

Faces lit up to the change of mood. Some grins split faces and eyes shined. The air changed dramatically and everyone started to get up slowly, waiting expectantly for what their resident musical idol would present them this time.

Gray started his ice instruments and an upbeat melody boomed in the place. He calmly walked to Elfman and Mira and pulled them to the center of the hall, into the mess and started to sing. Dance was naturally invoked from within all of them and for once, no one minded Vista doing his weird dances.

_Oh, let's goooh~ Yeah!_

_Ready to fly, you and me, everyone up and down  
>Scream and go crazy, rollercoaster ride<br>Put your hands up, you know, how we go  
>We gotta break it down, break it down, feeling good tonight!<br>A dazzling and shining star  
>I want, baby, I want, baby<br>Boys who fly around the world, up in the sky  
>Shall we shake up the world, putting in the palms of our hands?<em>

It was then, amidst the mess of moving bodies, the space was cleared, tables and benches and chairs were pushed to the walls and a dance floor created. Everyone, one by one or in pairs took the spotlight and had their ten seconds of glamour improvising. Whenever Gray was not too busy singing, he would engage in a battle with the others and push them, more and more to do better, put their souls into it and leave behind the grief.

_We're hurricane! We're hurricane!  
>We're hurricane, hurricane<br>We're Fairy Tail!_

_Magazines, lacrima, news, wherever it is, everyone watches us  
>Spreading like a fatal virus<br>Fiore, Bosco, the west and east, from south to north  
>I hear the loud cheer in the night!<em>

_The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire  
>The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire<br>Magnolia, Hargeon and the Capital City  
>Crocus, Clover, the Council, I guess I got a feeling<br>The place that calls me a stage killer  
>But keeping my humble attitude, alright?<br>My growing spectrum, I say la lala lala lala_

_The path we're on right now is the new rhythm of magic  
>The real ones who know how to party<br>Big fish in a little pond,  
>riding the magical folk to fight and party<br>We can do it all, we are awake  
>Our growing spectrum, we say!<br>(Shall we shake up the world, putting it in the palms of our hands?)_

_We're hurricane! We're hurricane!  
>We're hurricane, hurricane<br>We're Fairy Tail!_

The following day, things in Fairy Tail became livelier. Everyone was still adjusting themselves to Lisanna's absence, but things were way better than the day before, after Gray managed to plunk the three worst people out of their depression. It seemed that overnight, Mirajane and Elfman had a sudden change of heart and had their personalities reversed. When the girl showed up wearing a long dress and the guy had a wilder look everybody stared. Mira announced she was quitting being an active mage and would only work at the guild's bar and help everyone as much as she could. Elfman also surprised his fellow mages by inviting everyone into a brawl to show his manliness.

Sitting at a back table, Gray and Loke stared at them dumbfounded the whole time.

"Did you foresee that change?" the ginger-haired male asked his friend, who could only shake his head in denial, still unbelieving what his eyes showed him.

"I can only hope nothing else comes out of it. Anyways… Back to what we were discussing, are you up to it? I mean, that crew is crazy."

"And you would know about it, right?" Loke smirked and the younger male refrained from freezing the other's face right then and there.

"Master practically dragged me all the way to Valencia* to accept the request because it would profit the guild almost as much as a SS-class mission two years ago" the ice mage grunted and Loke patted him on the shoulder in condolences.

"Well, there you have the bad side of being that pretty. I bet in some years that won't happen anymore."

"I can only hope. Though sometimes it's funny to rub on Kana and Mira's faces I can beat them in modeling" they laughed.

The pair talked some more and finished the details of their next mission together, the arrangements for the day-long trip to the other city and schedules of works, so as what would be predictable of a normal day between those two friends, Loke turned his flirting mood on and Gray sweat dropped.

"No."

"Come on, Gray. It's been so long, you have even been singing your feelings since last year. Why not give us a chance?"

"We have cleared it already, Loke. No."

"Darn" Loke dropped his head in defeat only to poke it up hopefully, looking like a curious kitty, "Still best friends?"

Gray laughed and nodded. "Until death do us apart."

"Hey, Gray" the two friends turned to look at the new voice and eyed curiously a fidgeting Natsu standing right beside the ice mage. The dragon slayer looked tired, skin a little pale, dark rings under his eyes and lacking the usual energetic aura that always surrounded him. "Can we, um, talk?"

Both Gray and Loke raised a dubious eyebrow at the other's uncertainty. They looked at each other and after a second, the ginger-haired stood up and gave the dark-haired mage a small smile. "Have fun you two, just don't kill each other. I'll take a walk around town" he said, which Gray instantly interpreted as him going to meet some of his many lady-friends. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."

"See you then. And don't overdo yourself with your fangirls."

Fire and ice mage waited until the other was gone before facing each other. Gray motioned for the dragon slayer to take a seat beside him, but he shook his head. "I rather we talk somewhere more… private."

"O…kay."

The two young mages walked out of the guild in silence and started towards the riverside unconsciously. So used to go there together, it was almost like auto-pilot.

"So, you and Loke are going on a mission together tomorrow?" Natsu asked calmly from one step ahead.

"Yeah. Clarice* is shooting for a few companies' new autumn and winter collections and she requested me again. This time to bring an interesting manly looking guy with me" Gray rolled his eyes at his photographer's antics, but shrugged. It was always like that and he should already be used to it. After all, as he told Loke before, it was not the first time he was asked to pose in female roles.

"Why not ask me, then? Don't I look interesting?"

"Pff! You know, the artistic staff would put you under some layers of make-up and a dress and make us pose as something like the Summer and Winter Sisters or some shit like that. No way I'd do that, thank you very much. You look much more like a girl than I do, not to mention the pink hair" he snickered and dodged a flying fist to his head.

They continued the light talk and friendly banter some more until they were at the drying riverside.

These nice talks these two had was one of the things most people, even among the guild, didn't know about Fairy Tail's Salamander and Ice Alchemist. They were pretty good friends despite the constant brawls wherever they were, whenever it happened, however it went. It was a historical fact, though, that they began this dynamic of theirs a few months after they met. Initially, Gray would provoke Natsu, and Natsu, being the short tempered boy he has always been, would rise to the provocation and fight back, literally, with his fists. Eventually, it became a double way provocation whenever they felt like it.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" Gray asked finally when they were seated on the grass.

Natsu sighed and looked down at his restless hands. "Yesterday, when you cheered us up… I guess I have to thank you for that. You really inspired me."

The ice mage stared at his companion, wondering when Natsu hit his head strong enough to turn him into a nice honest person. "Are you sick, flame-head? If you continue talking like that, next thing you'll be declaring your undying love to me and ask me to be your boyfriend" he mocked and turned back to look at the horizon, a very subtle shadow of pain and longing in his eyes.

"I'm not sick, you stupid stripper! But… Would you?"

When Natsu asked that in a small almost timid voice, the dark-haired teen snapped his head back to look at his friend with eyes as wide as saucers. "The fuck?!"

"W-well, you heard me!" the pink-haired mage exclaimed, red covering his face and ears and eyes refusing to look up. "I… We have known each other for so long and I don't have the same chemistry we do with anyone else… I mean, we did promise to be mates when we were kids…"

"Yeah, we did…" Gray murmured and looked down as well. That was a dirty trick, to bring up that promise they made so long ago, when they were mere children and buried not long after it was made and had a silent agreement to never so much as brush on the subject again. He knew, Natsu knew and Natsu knew that he knew it was a fucking excuse and nothing else. Deep down, the ice mage knew he shouldn't continue harboring these feelings for the pink-head, that the guy was an air-head and would forever stay with Lisanna had she not suffered that incident on her last mission. Now with her gone, it was painfully obvious he was but a substitute for her. So, why? Why couldn't Gray let it just go and move on? Just what was wrong with him?

"Will you forget about me again when a cute and defenseless girl shows up at the guild?" he asked quietly. Later Natsu would mock him saying he sounded like a timid girl and he would tell him to fuck off and freeze his balls. But right now all Gray could think of was how stupid a person could be to give in to the person that forgot about you for four years so easily.

"Of course not! I promise, Gray, we are going to be together forever, okay?"

"I will rub it on your face if you don't keep that promise."

The rest of that day and night, Natsu decided he would make the ice mage his and his alone. He promised the other he would be with him whenever he needed and respect him as much as they could respect the other (which had a weird level of depth that absolutely did not apply to the basics levels of social respect). He promised they were going to be together forever and as soon as possible, under Master's permission, they would be official mates.

That night, feeling the dragon slayer's burning warmth, Gray chose to believe his promises, knowing that under some easily molded circumstances the other would forget half his words. He pushed the depressing fact that this relationship had no way to grow romantically away and decided to live a few moments of happiness with the mage he fell in love with in childish innocence and loneliness. He cursed Natsu for being such a convenient simple-minded bastard. He cursed himself for being so weak and stupid.

The next morning when Gray and Loke met at the station to depart for their first seasonal fashion mission together, the ginger-head had to stop and stare at his friend and not-so-secret crush. The boy had a different air about him. Almost like he was lighter and yet there was something tying him halfway underground. And the thing that kept his eyes glued to the dark-head that was on his bare neck under his jacket collar.

"Gray? Is that a hickey?" he asked pointing at the pale neck sporting a bright red spot just above his collarbone.

"I don't want to hear it" and Gray turned and both walked into the train.

Loke could only wonder if he was going to be able to survive long enough to help his best friend pick the inevitable pieces of his broken self when the time came.

xxXxXxXxXxXxx

Master Makarov decided to wait for a week in hopes of receiving any good news from the villagers in the Kotek Region* after listening to the whole tale of Natsu, Lucy and Happy. Unfortunately, they never did and the only thing they ever heard of the Northern Country was that they found nothing, no matter where and how long they searched. Word, then, spread quickly in the magic world that one of Fairy Tail's strongest mages was now passed.

The day of the funeral was as bad as the day half of Team Natsu returned to Magnolia. The sky was clear, the sun shining bright, a nice breeze was blowing, the birds were chirping, it was all wrong compared to the mood the gathered mages at Magnolia's graveyard. Every mage of Fairy Tail made it to attend the ceremony. At the forefront, no one dared to fight for the place with Kana, Erza, Laxus, Lyon or Loke, all five of them silently crying and barely holding themselves up. No one asked and few knew, but the air around them just gave it away.

Those people were the closest Gray had to a real family. Lyon was a known fact that he had trained under the same master as Gray and so they had a long history of brotherhood. Most of Fairy Tail knew him, Kana and Erza had the closest relationship of complicity in a sibling way from all groups of the guild, what with them being the youngest mage of it for some years, it was only natural they'd stick with one another. Laxus was an unusual case of being the older brother figure for those three, pulling the role of bad example and grumpy half-responsible brother perfectly, after all, where do you think Gray picked his bad habit of smoking? Loke, though, was an exception for the group. He was the only one not considered a sibling among them. He was the one to occupy the place of best friend and partner forever, not taken when Natsu and Gray started dating, not taken when he became Lucy's Spirit, not taken after the seven-year time of disappearance from Fairy Tail's core members.

Freed, Bickslow and Evergreen stood behind Laxus, all three of them keeping their heads down and eyes closed in sadness and respect. Much like the thunder dragon slayer, they saw the ice mage as a little brother, one that could be really annoying at times, but was always reliable and a great person, especially when he proved himself not afraid of facing a mini-scarlet monster to open up to everybody else.

Right behind Kana, Wendy with Charlie and Happy hug one another, trying to be strong, but too grief stricken to be able to. The young girl had the dark-haired mage as a brother, one of the many she got with joining the guild. But he was special. He and Erza would often take requests with her and help her whenever she asked and even if she didn't, they offered it with a warm smile that let her know they trusted her and didn't think she was weak, but they cared. Not to mention, from time to time when she got sad, the ice mage would cheer her up by singing or teaching her how to sing or dance, or both the same time.

To one side, near the lion spirit, Juvia and Gajeel stood stoically with thin tears coming out there eyes, which was quite a curious sight, everyone thought the rain woman would be flooding the town and creating a (not so) natural catastrophe; she didn't. After the Grand Magic Games, she and Gray had come clean for once and for all. Juvia loved him, Gray didn't return the feeling, but liked her much like he liked Kana and she accepted. Though the rain woman would slip into fangirl-mode now and then, they set into a comfortable partnering and friendly relationship. On the other hand Gajeel and the ice mage struck a friendly musical rivalry relationship after his first (hated) performance in Fairy Tail. They had respect for each other magic and musical wise, and that was enough for the oldest dragon slayer.

A step behind the frontline, Natsu glared at the tombstone with thick tears running down his face, in his arms he held a crying Lucy.

The blonde still couldn't believe. This was not the first time she was faced with death. Years before, her mother died and left her practically alone at home with only the celestial spirits and staffs to make her company. Then, when they came back from the incident with Tenrou Island, she found out her father had just died. She was but a child when she lost her mother and it was bad enough, then having matured and kept a distant relationship with the father, besides her friends' help, Natsu's specially, it hadn't been that difficult to overcome the sadness. But those were caused by illness! It is harder to fight some fatal illness than for a Fairy Tail mage to die, no matter what they'd be facing. Gray's death wasn't supposed to happen anytime soon, or ever! Why was her life so cruel?

Meanwhile, the dragon slayer could only think of how strange this situation felt to him.

He was numb, like a part of himself was missing, without him even knowing. He reasoned it must be the loss of a nakama. When the same happened to Lisanna, he felt something similar to this. But in a way, it still felt different. Was it because differently of the animal take-over mage Gray was someone he had a deeper connection with? It made sense to him. The two could fight in perfect harmony together with so much as exchanging a look. He hardly could do that with anyone else. Then maybe it could be because he was there the time the ice mage was hit and he felt like he should have done more. For fuck's sake he was there! It was his obligation as friend and nakama to keep his friends safe. Gray was one of the strongest people he knew, not that he'd admit so to him, and he had survived Deliora's attack when a kid, a war with two big dark guilds, Acnologia's attack and then a whole out war against seven dragons and its offspring. How could he just die like that for a minor ice demon?

The other fairies were sobbing and hugging each other for comfort. They may complain time and time again that the ice mage together with the fire dragon slayer made the most destructive team the guild had ever seen, only worsened when Erza was put in the middle. But a nakama was nakama and Gray would always be their beloved and talented stripper, and no one else could claim that!

Some mages from Lamia Scale, Sabertooth and Blue Pegasus also were present, having known the ice mage for a while or any other kind of interaction with him or to support a friend. The old masters from the guilds stood aside, silently looking over their children with weighted hearts, Makarov, particularly. The short man couldn't believe that little brat of eight years that walked into his guild so many years ago looking for powerful mages was gone.

In front of the assembled group, was Gray's tombstone. It was a marvelous piece, made in dark stone with a snowflake sculpture atop it. At the base, a simple script could be read.

_Gray Fullbuster_

_X766 – X791_

_Beloved friend and brother_

_May the song of the ice ring forever_

Timid and child-like whines sounded from the entrance and the mages turned to see a group of children and teens with some civilian adults, young and aged. Kana, Erza, Wendy and Loke recognized them right away and motioned them to come closer. The young ones ran to the girls' side and hugged them, creating a fake attempt of a dog pile. The adults walked quietly and exchanged sad looks with the three present grown-ups that helped the House the most before addressing the children.

"Now come, let's pay our respect for Gray-niisan, so he'll know we all still love him" one of the middle-aged women said to the young ones and slowly, one by one, they placed a small flower at the base of the stone and murmured some words barely understandable between hiccups and sobs. When all kids and adults were done, the eldest woman – a strict looking lady – turned to Erza and Kana.

"The House will still stand?" she asked quietly, knowing it wasn't the right place to talk business, but she couldn't help. Her worry for the orphanage was too great to live another minute in doubt.

It was Erza who answered. "Of course. Kana and I will continue to care for it for as long as possible. And I assure it will be for a long time."

The old lady nodded smiling in appreciation and turned to guide her group out of that death place. The children shouldn't stay another moment around there.

"I guess it's time we go too" Laxus said suddenly. "We still have some things to take care of."

The other four beside him nodded and along with Wendy, his three team members, Juvia and Gajeel, they turned to leave the site. Surprised by their attitude, Lucy looked up and stared at them. They hadn't been there for an hour and they were already leaving?

"Wait!" she called and the group looked at her, all of them already with faces clear of any tears. "You are just going to continue working right after we lost…" she couldn't continue. It was one thing to understand the fact, but to actually say it aloud would set it in stone and the reality of things would change.

"Gray is dead, Lucy" Erza stated firmly, receiving gasps from many mages, most of them from other guilds and the ones from Fairy Tail she noted joined after Lisanna's supposed death. "And it isn't because of it that the world is going to stop spinning or time stop to flow. If you don't want to forget about him, then live for him" the scarlet haired young woman turned and continued to walk away with the others headed to Fairy Fields, the male dorms of the guild.

Slowly, the other mages too started to leave, saying a last pray to the deceased mage and walking away quietly until only Lucy and Natsu were left, staying long after the last person was parted with a worried glance at the couple. The dragon slayer stood on his place, unmoving, fists still tightly closed and eyes still locked on the gravestone.

"Natsu" she called but there was no response from the fire mage. "Natsu, it's getting late. Let's go back to the guild at least."

Natsu stared at the grave some more seconds before turning and offering the girl a hand. Silently she took it and the pair went back to the guild.

The following weeks, Fairy Tail slowly got back on track of being the ever roistering guild it was known for. Everybody went back to their usual weird self, partying for the most random reasons, going on missions frantically with the approaching end of year and (confirmed by Master Makarov) S-class Promotion Exam and living the fullest. It was almost like they haven't just lost one of theirs.

One day, Lucy had just returned from another series of missions with Natsu and Happy and was enjoying a little rest on the guild bar. Surprisingly to her, the damage caused by them was minimal and most of the reward went to them, which, of course, made her very happy. Spinning on her booth with drink in hand, her brown eyes surveyed the hall and she wondered how some things had changed for the past three weeks since the funeral.

At one table, Levy was reading a book a little too focused, ignoring Jet and Droy besides her talking to Mark. She giggled at that, moving her gaze to the pair near the Request Board discussing what mission to take next. Juvia and Gajeel could be seen spending a lot of time together, usually going on missions. The blonde guessed their relationship when they were still with Phantom Lord was quite close and only now, with Juvia's main distraction not around, it was showing.

At another side, Erza, Kana, Wendy and Charlie were also talking about missions, but theirs had already been decided on an S-class one and the white cat was lecturing the three girls about being careful. Lucy had earlier asked the scarlet woman in curiosity about her sudden partnering with the other two and she simply said she and Kana had always gone to missions together when they were younger and she saw Wendy as a little sister, so it was only natural.

Some other random mages were around, drinking and talking and mostly doing nothing interesting, so she turned back to the bar and her writing. Unfortunately, she'd been stuck in a writer's block recently and couldn't seem to get out of it no matter what she did.

So focused on her thoughts, the girl didn't notice Natsu come from behind her sporting a serious expression on his face, nor his sudden grin and imminent attack.

"Hiya, Lucy!" he yelled and hugged her middle, scaring the hell out of her.

After she calmed down and punched him on the head, both were peacefully sitting side by side eating lunch. The celestial spirit mage had put her work aside and was fully enjoying one of Mirajane's famous dishes.

"Hey, Lucy" the young man called munching on a piece of meat and she responded with a simple 'Hm?' "You wanna be my girlfriend?"

As one of Mira's perfectly timed 'wrong place at the wrong time' situations, she happened to walk by when Lucy spit all contents in her mouth directly at her face level.

"I'm sorry, Mira-san!" the blonde said to the white-haired woman, who just brushed the incident off, and snapped back her attention to the dragon slayer. "What do you mean, Natsu?!"

"Well" he drank from his cup and swallowed down before looking right into her face, "I am asking if you want to have an official romantic relationship with me. What, have you turned stupid?"

"I understood the meaning of the question!" she fumed and drew her eyebrows in confusion and crossed her arms. "What I meant to ask is why are you asking that now? I remember you saying, when we started to fool around after the Grand Magic Games, that you didn't feel it would be right, even if you liked me and all. What changed?"

"I don't know. I just feel like it is right now. Don't you want to?" Natsu asked seriously, looking intently at her.

She looked at him seriously. It was something that could only be described as one of her many dreams come true. Ever since she met him at Hargeon Port, there was a crescent feeling in her that drew her closer to him each day they spent together. Of course, many times his childish and brute antics pissed the hell out of her, but it was the same childish and brute Natsu that saved her too many times to count and had her falling deep in love with him.

So Lucy did the only thing she could think of. She beamed at him, opening the brightest smile she had since coming back from Tenrou Island. "Yes!"

xxXxXxXxXxXxx

Somewhere around the northeastern endless plains of snow, a group of rough looking men was traveling towards Pergrande Kingdom. They hoped to reach the next village before nightfall or the next blizzard, fortunately, the weird sudden weather changes stopped a month prior. Rumor had it some mages from Fiore took care of the case, whatever it was that had been causing the trouble. That didn't mean, though, they were safe out in the snow, after all it wasn't unheard of sudden storms around this area of Iceberg at the end of the day from late September on.

From time to time, a couple from the ten men would walk ahead for a while and come back to join the main group with reports on the surroundings. At one of these scouting of no new development, the pair sent signaled a finding. Quickly the others went towards them and their leader approached the duo crouching on the snow.

"What you found?" he asked in a surprisingly smooth and deep voice.

"You'll like it, boss. 'Tis a fair maiden" one of the scouts said grinning and both showed their finding.

It was a young woman with pale skin and raven short messy hair, completely bare of any clothing. She was by no means a small person. She had narrow shoulders and a thin figure, but her legs were long just like her arms, in perfect proportion with the torso. From neck to toes, muscles were apparent, not overly developed, just right to indicate that body was strong and still maintaining her femininity, yet easily confusable as male with the right clothing. There was no overly round butt or thighs, nor overgrown breasts. And her face albeit delicate, could easily pass as a pretty guy. Some features that made the men annoyed, though, were the small scar atop her left eyebrow and the cross shaped one at her lower right abdomen besides the deep blue bird-like tattoo on her right breast.

"Is she even alive?" the boss asked, eyes still roaming the naked body.

"Heh" the other scout answered. "She's cold as ice, but still alive with a subtle but present pulse. And what's better, she's untouched."

Large smirks grew on everyone's faces. "Then get to work! Put the bitch with the others and don't forget to scan her!" the leader ordered and soon other two men brought the woman to one of their two carriages.

Opening the only door to the back of one carriage, they tossed the unconscious body inside and went in afterwards, locking it after them. Inside, there was a single lamp to illuminate the space. Cramped there, were four young ladies, all huddled together with fearful expressions etched on their faces at the men's entrance. They didn't give them any importance at the time and proceed with their orders. One of the men took a thick blanket out of the many bags pilled on a corner and brought over while the other took a rod-like device and started to hover it over the woman. Immediately, the jewel at the tip of the rod gave a bright glow and the instrument was put away. The men looked at each other and nodded. One of them got out and left his partner to proceed.

He walked to the boss, group already on the move again.

"Report" the leader demanded when his man come to him.

"The chick is a mage and a hell of a powerful one too. Me and Dra were almost blinded by it. Dra is putting the shackles with the runes on her right now, so it shouldn't be a problem, but better note it on the record."

The boss nodded and dismissed his subject to join his co-worker. He thought about what has just been said. They had found a young woman, with a wonderful and pure body and she was a powerful mage to top it. He grinned. Things couldn't be better.

That group was one of the many slave trafficker groups that travelled around the northern area of Seven, Iceberg and Pergrande Kingdom, and right now they were headed to said Kingdom for the annual Human Auction of the black market there, and this last finding was sure to grant them a lot of money.

x- Hours earlier -x

In a swirl of snowflakes, a figure was materialized, a figure of long limbs, strong muscles, pale skin, jet black hair and dark blue eyes. Those dark blue eyes with long and straight eyelashes and droopy lids eyed the endless field of white around, small dots of white still dancing around it.

_Nothing?_

The figure asked itself mentally and tried to take a step forward only to fall flat on the snow, the magical atmosphere broken.

_No energy… _ The figure noticed trying to move any limb again and not succeeding. Knowing that the cold would never hurt, it closed the dark eyes and shut down into a deep slumber, deciding to rest and recover some energy before attempting anything to understand what was happening and what its identity was.

In that slumber, no scene, but feelings and a name came forth.

It began with immense happiness, the kind to warm the whole world and everybody with it in the most comfortable way. Then there was a sudden blow of pain of rejection followed by frustration, the type that installed itself into somebody's core and turned and grew until it became anger and lashed out, but all the while the pain was still present, hiding behind the anger and rooting itself deeper and deeper.

The anger slowly dimmed, never leaving, but became smaller and gave space to something else grow: a content notion of friendship. That lasted a while and then that happiness from the beginning came back, but now it was bittersweet, so much there were moments a need of some sort of release became so much things got fuzzy and spiraled into circles after circles of melodies.

Then things felt like a rollercoaster ride. One moment there was joy, another there was anger and then fear. After there was confusion and anger mixed with happiness to turn into almost blind rage in many levels and confusion again and hope, only to finish with the bloom of the one feel that followed in the shadows all the way: betrayal.

This emotional circuit was carried by and began with one name: _Natsu_.

When deep blue eyes opened, their owner was assaulted by a lot of information.

The young woman was seated on a very comfortable armchair though her position was anything but. Around her neck, wrists and ankles were shackles attached to the armchair. On their outer face of the metal pieces, she saw the glowing runes and sighed at their meaning.

_No using magic then, until they are off._

Aside from the metal pieces, she was bare to the world if not for a simple sash going over her right shoulder down to pool on her right hip and fall aside. Her arms were tied to the armrests and ankles to the furniture's bottom, keeping her in place.

She was placed on a room filled with many people, half of them being young and pretty ladies with very different features but in the same nude state as her, though they were merely shackled to one another or poles, all looking terrified and disheartened; the other half consisted of strong looking men, heavily clothed and armed with whips and spears, some even carried some daggers. These men moved around hastily, dragging or pushing some of the women around or simply stood watching over them with hungry looks in their eyes, _guards_.

What caught her attention, though, was the whispered talk among the females.

"That one is the big prize of the year."

"I heard she is a mage. Do you think she is strong?"

"That is unlikely. If she was, she wouldn't be here."

"Makes sense. But how to explain her lack of marks? I mean, we came in the same load and our traffickers gave her one hell of torture, but she always healed instantly, like her body turned into snow and then flesh again."

"Not to mention never once did she wake up for the five days we travelled after she was found.

"Maybe that's her only magic? She could be a healer or something and have no offensive power."

"Well, that is possible."

"For how much do you think she'll be bought?"

"They say she's a mage and virgin, right? Plus with her looks, I'd bet they'll start with 1.000 gold pieces."

"That much, huh…"

The rest of the talk became unimportant and the dark-haired woman turned back to her musings.

If only the runes tying her didn't block her magic or at least physical strength, she could easily burst out and not be subjugated like this. She had no idea who she was or what she did before gaining conscience in the snow plains, but this situation was humiliating.

So without anything to do, she waited. For long hours, more and more girls were dragged out of the cold room and sold at high costs to sadists and perverted people. Finally when no one else was left but her, five men came to her and threw a blanked over her and carried the armchair somewhere. The young woman didn't feel anything, not a hitch of breath, no acceleration of heartbeat, no nervous perspiration, there was only blank boredom to be read on her figure.

She was eventually put down and someone, an energetic man, started to speak.

"Now we come to our last and most valuable piece of the night!" as on cue, the blanket was pulled off and she stared right into a huge audience sitting on comfortable chairs for meters on end. "This is Snow White! As you all can see, ladies and gentlemen, this young lady is of excellent quality. Perfectly sculptured body, her strong form promises countless services for the most select tastes and varied imagination! And the qualities don't stop there! This beauty is magical! Literally! She specializes in ice magic and the best part is that her body, whenever hurt, reconfigures itself immediately and leaves her bare of any marks!" murmurs of disbelief erupted from the audience and the announcer smirked.

Another man came onto stage holding a broad short sword and positioned it on her lower left abdomen. Their eyes locked and he grinned. Gasps echoed among the buyers when he impaled the blade on her body and yanked it out enlarging the cut. She grimaced and bit down on her lip to hold any sound of pain from coming out. Warm blood oozed down the open cut down the hip and thigh onto the chair. The announcer then came and cleaned the injury, showing off the icy surface left that was quickly turning into flesh again. Amused applauses erupted from the spectators and the cheerful mood was back.

"Now, my dearest ladies and gentlemen, I have proven my words, let us finish the list of wonderful qualities of dear Snow White! The one, most of us would only dream of finding in a beauty of this age, this one feature that pushes people to their limits and beyond! My lovely guests, Snow White is as pure as her name! Here in front of you, is an immaculate young lady!"

From that point on the woman blocked the voices out as they started to shout prices over prices. Her dark eyes trailed to the side of the stage, where the man that stabbed her was standing, still holding the bloody blade. He felt her gaze and smirked. Mocking her, he brought the weapon to his lips and liked the blood with an annoying expression of satisfaction. Her eyes narrowed and she silently promised him pain, and a lot of it. Looking away from him, she directed her gaze towards the open sky overhead.

The stars were twinkling beautifully. She recognized many constellations among the shining dots. The Leo circuit was the one that had her attention the most. It was strange, something in it gave her a sense of familiarity. And for one second, she closed her eyes and allowed a small smile to be drawn on her thin lips, thinking it would be nice to be among the stars.

Then the stars crashed on earth. Literally.

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><p><strong>NA time!**

**Haha! I have always wanted to do a cliffhanger! I don't know why, but it is just so dramatic! Sorry, guys, but I need to do it xD**

**Anyway, d****id anyone feel like Natsu's relationships started forcefully? I can't get it off my mind, but I'm not changing it either xP I mean, it kind of fits his careless personality… and what I want from him in this story.**

**The song this time [Hurricane, sang by the Korean boy-band B.A.P.] for the chapter has been modified, obviously. I tried to adapt it better for the Fairy Tail world and though they were minimal, I hope the changes fit. And for those who know the song or got curious and went for it, you can see I cut it short about its middle, but I wasn't going to repeat the whole choruses again when it didn't have anything significant to say, come on! Other lazy songfic writers might understand that frustration of mine xP**

***Valencia – anyone recognized the name? Yes, it is (according to google) the Spanish Capital of fashion. So basically, I will base the names of and places of Fiore on Europe, Portugal and Spain in particular, because looking at Fairy Tail's world map, it does resemble Europe to me.**

**Before anyone comment, I feel there is something about Loke in the flashback I should explain. He does like Gray, a lot! The reasons will come in another flashback some chapters later. But he still is a playboy not to cover his want to be with him (well, that too), but to occupy him not to think about Karen Lilica. IF Gray had accepted his feelings and they were together, I would make it that those two were very faithful and I wouldn't take away Loke's flirty nature, it'd come around to annoy the hell out of girls and amuse Gray… And I do intend to do that some time still.**

***Clarice is a minor OC of mine. Don't give her much importance, but she will make an appearance later on. I just have yet to plan how it'll be, but she might wipe the floor with Lucy's pride… Muahahahah!**

**I don't know what you guys think, but I particularly see Gray with a leaner body before the Grand Magic Games, when his shoulders widened a lot in a real short time (O.o), but specially when he was younger, and puberty and hormones hadn't hit full force to start the physical changes, I like to think of him as having a more androgynous figure… A least when he had clothes on.**

***Kotek Region, for those who did not recognize, is the area Cygnus Hyoga, from Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac) received his training to became a warrior in Siberia, at the northeast of Russia. I have no idea if it actually exists or was Kurumada's invention, and I was too lazy to look into it (though I should have). If anyone knows about it, I'd like to know too, but that isn't really all that important, but knowledge is always nice.**

**Locations of Earthland were taken from here: fairytail. / wiki/ Special:Maps/5952**

**I have to say, it surprised me to know Fiore is such a small country when you think about it. It might be because I am Brazilian and am used to have a huge national territory and even enormous states, but still… I always pictured Fiore a little bigger xD**

**By the way, people, just for the record, I do NOT support human trafficking or slavery. It just popped up in my mind and it kind of fit well with the story. I needed to carry dear 'Sown White' away from Fiore some more before doing anything else with her, so this situation just went good.**

**Now, I'll stop babbling and let you continue with your pretty (social?) lives! Also, don't forget to review, because comments are always nice, flames will be given to Natsu and if anyone has any suggestion of songs that you think would fit the story or that you'd like to see here, leave on the comments and I'll see if I can do anything with it. Furthermore, all comments are appreciated.**

**~Atsuko Uehara, 30/November/2014.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello, everybody!**

**As always, I am very grateful of for the people favoring, following and specially reviewing. So special thanks to: _BeautifulWonderland256, AsDarknessSpreads, Rewinsan and Guest_! You guys are always appreciated.**

**I also better warn everyone beforehand to avoid confusion concerning timeline that I have messed with the time when the manga's past and current arcs (_Spoiler!_Sun Village and _Tartaros!Spoiler_) happen to better fit my story because I need it to make it more dramatic on Fairy Tail xD There is also some OoC-ness here, but you know, memory loss tend to do that to people.**

**Here you can watch the official music video of this chapter's song: www. youtube watch?v=_L-9APlTc6M**

**Though the story in the video is very good, it has absolutely nothing to do with the chapter of my story, just to make it clear.**

**And now, enjoy the story!**

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><p><strong>03 – Ice Flower <strong>_**by Ailee**_

Dark sky, very bright stars, planet-like objects of different sizes and with the most varied forms on it, nebulas and rainbow like stone paths, that was how the young woman would describe her surroundings to a child.

"Mistress" a deep, strong and female voice said from behind her and the dark-haired turned to look at who called.

In front of her, now, were crouching nine figures of very distinct appearances.

At the front were a male and a female human figure. The best way to describe them was as hunters. The man had a rough look to him with pelt like clothes and armor, a circular shield on his back, a sword at his hip and a bow and quiver full of long arrows hanging from one broad shoulder, he had shoulder long silver hair and a stern face with hard eyes and long beard. The woman had the same wild themed image to her as her companion, but instead of a sword and shield, she carried knives and a spear. Her long wavy hair was mostly tied in a thick braid over her strong torso with a few stresses falling around her face.

To the hunter's right side stood a silver cross-shape headed creature with long braided beard and small hunched body covered by a long robe. To the huntress' left side was a beautiful lady of tanned skin and long wavy brown hair, she wore a long light colored silky dress with thick chains going around her waist, shoulders and arms.

Right behind the pair of hunters was another couple of human figures. The man had platinum short hair and bright ice blue eyes. He wore a long coat over a prince like tunic and had a swan theme all over his image with feathers on one shoulder and hair. The lady beside him had light brown hair braided into an elaborate high bun, fair skin and deep dark brown eyes. She wore a long sleeveless light purple dress and had a big beautiful harp at her side.

At the back, three animals bowed their head towards her. To the left was a gold striped silver serpent the size of century old tree. At the center stood a pure white winged horse. And to the right was a serpent like dragon of dark green scales and silver hair.

"You are the highest celestial spirits of the constellations of Orion, Crux, Andromeda, Cygnus, Lyra, Hydra, Pegasus and Draco and this is the Celestial Spirit World. Do tell me though, why am I here?" the woman asked in deep smooth and cold voice, keeping her face stoic and looking at each of the spirits in front of her.

"Mistress" the male Spirit of Orion answered, "we were called by you and brought you here."

"Even without having your keys, you say I summoned you, Orion?"

"Yes, Mistress."

The woman took her eyes away from the group and looked around again, nothing changed. She looked down at her body and noticed the attire on her, black combat boots, baggy dark brown pants, fitting dark blue tank top and a hooded cream colored robe over her shoulders. No shackles. No chains. No limiting runes. She smiled at that and turned back to the spirits.

"Any idea on how I summoned you when my magic was sealed inside my body?"

"Yes, Miss" the Crux Spirit spoke up. "What happened was a very rare occurrence. The last time a deed like that was executed was long ago. Miss' wish, mingled with her powerful magic connected with our world's and both tuned opened our gates spontaneously."

The human nodded accepting the explanation. "And why the nine of you? I didn't have anyone in mind and the constellations shining over me were not only or all of ours."

"As for that" Pegasus spoke, raising his head to look at her with his golden eyes, "we wanted to come and let others stay behind. It had been a while your energy interested us, and finally Milady was able to call us."

"That is correct. Personally, since my little sister told me the Lady's story, I wanted to meet thee" the Lyra Spirit commented and had an arm from the male beside her hold her waist, both exchanging warm smiles.

"What of the others?" the woman asked looking at the rest of the rising spirits. All of them looked at her seriously but with a warm feeling.

"Since last time you came here, we all felt your connection with Leo-sama. It intrigued us" Andromeda responded and covered her lips to giggle. "So we asked and he gave us the most interesting answer ever heard from him."

"And may I question what it was?"

This time, Orion snickered and exchanged funny glances with his friends. "He described this dear friend of his as one of a kind and someone he wouldn't mind be tied to for the rest of his immortal life."

The human arched an eyebrow. "Is that so…" she looked at them all closely then asked one last thing, closing her eyes with a calm smile on her lips. "You mentioned me being here and having contact with your kin before. I have no recollection of such though. Could you help me understand why I have no memory?"

The spirits looked surprised at her admittance and looked at each other again, before they turned back and answered with huge grins on their faces, "It'll be a pleasure!"

Over the next hours, Cruzeiro, the Cross, investigated as much as he could to come up with a reasonable explanation to the woman's situation. The other eight spirits helped as much as possible, but mostly they did little talk to let their guest know them better. In the end of the day, with the spirit's researches and the woman's own knowledge of magic (which was nearly unlimited), they came up with her having had used one of the few ancient and prohibited spells in the ice magic field that dissolved the user's body and reconfigured it right away and unfortunately her body was not strong enough to finished the spell without collateral effects, ending in her losing her memory and a late reconfiguration into a slightly wrong shape.

That aside, the spirits said her other visit to the Celestial Spirit World happened a few months prior and with some friends of hers, mostly because ten of the Elliptical Zodiac Spirits missed the owner of their keys and brought the mage and friends there. And finally, all nine of them asked to make contracts with the woman, whose name they had yet to learn.

"I don't remember. You guys should know it. The last thing I was called was 'Snow White' and I rather never hear that name associated with me again" she said with a frown.

Eurydice, the Lyra Spirit, put on a thoughtful expression. "Well, you could use the name my sister said you went by, but I don't know if that goes well with your current image, Lady."

"Let's hear it anyway", Ludo, the Draco Spirit said from his position lying down next to the human.

The harpist answered them and their contract was made, but in a very different way than most contracts between celestial spirit mages and spirits were made nowadays. Over their promised words, a magical link bound them together and only absolute defeat of the mage would free the spirits from their contract. And most importantly, the physical keys would always, some way or another, return to their owner and never accept any other call if not from their real partner.

xxXxXxXxXxXxx

The incoming December, for Fairy Tail, meant one thing: chaos. Not that it didn't describe the guild the rest of the year, but in this last month in particular, it reached levels beyond human comprehension.

Since the S-class Promotion Exam was announced months prior, everybody went crazy, wanting to compensate the seven years they all lost, for the strongest member, and trying to come even the slightest close to them, for the members that didn't partake in the Grand Magic Games and couldn't show off as much. And this time, not one mage was left behind in the craziness.

Lucy went on as many missions as she could with whoever would want to go with her or even alone in the less dangerous ones. Natsu and most of the other males were as crazy as always. Juvia, Kana and Wendy and Charlie partnered often and usually went on a series of quests in a roll. Even Erza was taking the competition seriously, much to many people's dismay, the fire dragon slayer, for one, took it as a challenge.

Master Makarov watched every one of his children going around and thinking of the changes since their return from Tenrou Island. He was fairly impressed by how much they all have grown so quickly and even more proud of how everyone moved on so fast carrying their passed friend's will. With three days before the announcement of this year's candidates for S-class mages, he already knew who he was going to call.

The day finally came and the guild was cramped with mages. For the past months after the Games, Fairy Tail's fame came back full force and many mages joined them, adding to their family, but those who were there since little still were the most enthusiastic ones and they stood at the front line with beaming faces.

Standing on the guild's stage, flanked by Erza, Mirajane and Laxus, Master eyed everyone and forced a cough to gather their attention. As soon as the hall was quiet, he started his speech.

"We all know that for the past seven years, due unfortunate circumstances, this Fairy Tail custom was not followed. But now it has changed and we are back!" cheers erupted from everyone before quieting quickly. "I will now announce the participants of the S-class Mage Promotional Exam!" Even more cheers were shouted now. "The trial will happen in the same place as last year, the Sacred Grounds of Fairy Tail, Tenrou Island! And I don't want to hear speculations of another attack! We have, this time, seven participants!

"Natsu Dragneel!"

"Alright!"

"Gajeel Redfox!"

"Gihi!"

"Juvia Loxar!"

"Juvia will do it for Gray-sama and herself."

"Kana Alberona!"

"This time I'll do it!"

"Elfman Strauss!"

"Man!"

"Freed Justine!"

"For the honor of the Raijinshuu I'll become S-class."

"Levy McGarden!"

"Eek! Me? Now?"

Cheers and compliments were shouted all over the place and the participants started on their ideas and the others that didn't and in a way expected a chance thought on what to do better for the next year and congratulated those whom were chosen.

"Like last year," Mirajane spoke up and the people turned to listen, "you all are given a preliminary week to choose a partner that best suits you."

"The rules also remain the same," Erza then said seriously, "the chosen partner must be a mage of Fairy Tail and cannot be S-class."

"And as a bonus for you all," Laxus commented with a mischievous grin on his face, "Master allowed me to say this much: Erza, Mira and I will be around and there will be fighting."

"WHAAAT!"

Minutes later, most of the candidates were gathered at a table with their friends, talking over drinks.

"Yo, chibi" Gajeel said turning to Levy, who jumped a little. "Sorry, but this time you'll have to do on your own. Lily and I are definitely going to make it."

"That's right. I'm going to make Gajeel an official S-class mage of Fairy Tail" the dark cat said smiling proudly beside the metal dragon slayer.

"Well, I'm definitely no match for any of you guys in battles," Levy said keeping a calm and confident expression on her face, "but I'll do my best and if it turns out to be an intellectual trial at some point, it is you who will be eating my dust! Besides, Lu-chan is going to help me, right?" she turned to the blond girl, who jumped in surprise at the mention of her name.

"Eh? Me? But…" Lucy turned to the brunette a few seats away from her. Kana found her gaze and laughed and waved her off.

"Don't worry, Lucy. Go be Levy's partner. She'll need it" her brown eyes got a mischievous glint in them. "Also, there was something I wanted to ask you, Lucy."

"Sure, what is it?"

"Can you call Loke? I want to speak with him."

The others at the table looked at the card mage in surprise, dots quickly connecting. "Are you going to have Loke as your partner?!" Lucy screeched.

"I think it's only natural" the celestial spirit showed up out of nowhere behind Kana's seat.

"Since we lost our common partner" the woman smirked and looked at the ginger-haired man, who had the same expression.

"What do you mean, 'your common partner'?" the celestial mage asked confused.

"Before Gray was a candidate, he was my fixed partner. And then Loke became his. So, Gray is our common partner. In more ways than that" she finished smirking slyly and licked her lips, to which Loke only chuckled lightly, but said nothing.

Instantly, Lucy, Juvia, Wendy, Lisanna, Elfman and Levy became beat red and one could see steam coming out their heads.

"What's the problem with you guys? Those three were drinking partners. Haven't you noticed that ice bastard could drink two thirds as much as Kana?" Natsu asked with a straight face and watched confused as the others dropped off their chairs.

"Weird people" Charlie commented. "What were you even thinking?"

"Ahahah. Nothing, nothing" the youngest girl of the group laughed awkwardly. Damn her waking hormones for giving her nasty thoughts. "But then that is settled. Gajeel-san's partner is Lily-san. Levy-san will team with Lucy-san and Kana-san with Loke-san."

"Don't forget me and Natsu!" Happy jumped up and fist-bumped with the fire mage.

"And Freed is probably partnering with Bickslow too. So that leaves only Juvia to pick a partner" Lisanna commented from her spot beside her brother.

"Why didn't you count me too, Lisanna?" the big man asked with the faintest whine in his voice.

"Oh, but I thought you were going to do it again with my new sister-in-law?" the white haired girl asked pointing to Evergreen, who was having a heated argument with her two teammates, both men seeming to be annoying the hell out of her by her red cheeks.

Elfman shut up and the others watched smugly as red crept up his neck and face then laughed.

"Actually," the rain woman said after controlling her laughter, "Juvia wanted to invite Wendy-san to be Juvia's partner."

"Me? But why?" the small girl looked surprised at the blue-haired woman.

"Because Wendy-san and Juvia have been working well together in past missions. What does Wendy-san say?"

"It'll be a pleasure! I'll do my best, Juvia-san!"

With that the pairs were formed and they disbanded to do some preparations for the following week.

The day the mages spent on Tenrou Island was intense and at the end of it, all candidates and partners had to be literally dragged back to the guild from exhaustion.

The Exam was a one round, free for all battle royale; whoever of the candidates was still standing after five hours or recognized by one of the supervisors would became Fairy Tail's newest S-class mage. In the end, none of the pairs were left standing, but Natsu, after fighting Erza for two hours, was promoted. Not that he had the energy to celebrate the accomplishment or was even awake to hear it, but the female knight wasn't unharmed either.

The night of the day they came back, was filled with music and laughter and cheers despite ten of them being too sore and tired to do much. Naturally that didn't stop Kana from dinking or Bickslow from pestering Evergreen and Elfman about their relationship, neither stop Lucy from yelling at Natsu and being answered by a very sloppy kiss on the lips or Gajeel from clearing the stage for him and sing one of his infamous songs. And obviously, half of the building was nearly destroyed by intense partying, which also involved fighting, because a Fairy Tail party wasn't a Fairy Tail party if there was no fighting involved.

A few days later, when Lucy could actually feel her body again with little pain, she went to spend a night at Natsu's house, taking advantage of Happy having a sleepover at Fairy Hills with Charlie and Lily and Wendy and Erza. Letting herself in with a spear key, unsurprisingly, she found the front room in a complete mess, though it was still better than the first time she came around. With a sigh, she surveyed the problem and got to work, cleaning everything, putting overturned furniture back on its place, washing dirty pots and pans, throwing away the trash. Of course most of the work was done by Virgo, though.

About an hour later, when she was putting the last item back on their place on the shelf at the back of the room, a messy collection at the lower level sticking out the curtain got her attention. She kneeled down to see what it was and froze on the spot. It was just not possible that Natsu, of all people, would do that. What were the chances?

The front door opened and Natsu came in, saying a cheerful 'Hi!' after seeing the blonde in his house.

"Natsu Dragneel" the celestial spirit mage said darkly and cold sweat started to form on his body as he began to tremble. She sounded really mad and had waves of dangerous aura emanating from her body.

"W-what?" he stuttered meekly.

"Don't you 'what' me. What is the meaning of this?" she said getting up on her feet and holding something, face slightly turned down and not facing him.

"Wha-what is the meaning of what, Lucy?" the dragon slayer took a half step behind, thinking seriously about fleeing his own house. A pissed Lucy was as scary as a strawberry-cake-less Erza.

"I said don't you 'what' me. Now tell me, what are these things doing here?" Lucy was still sounding dark and scary, but she took a step aside and let Natsu see what she had found.

Hesitantly, the young man looked at her feet to see what this was about. His nervousness and fear vanished instantly and he approached her putting his hands on his hips. "What of these?" he asked nonchalantly.

"WHAT OF THESE!" she screamed at his face, face contorted in rage. "HOW CAN YOU FEEL SO LITTLE OF… OF… OF THESE THINGS! DON'T YOU KNOW IT MEANS?"

"I know what they mean. I don't know why you are this mad" he deadpanned and Lucy turned to pick another object out of the shelf.

"For how long have you had these?" the blonde asked shaking with contained anger.

"Ten years, if you count those seven years."

"That long… And never have you thought about telling me? Not once?"

"Why should I? What does it matter if you knew or not?"

"It matters a lot! Do you really think our relationship means so little?!"

"Lucy," Natsu said seriously and put his hands on the girl's shoulders, making her look at him with teary eyes, "I told you I love you, haven't I?" she nodded slowly. "Then believe it! They don't mean to me nearly as much as you or our memories do."

Lucy didn't respond to that. She moved her gaze down and stared at the objects in her hands.

"Besides, why are you so worked up for a few discs and music players?"

The girl snapped her head up and glared at her boyfriend. "Why am I so worked up?! Natsu! This is the Icy Fairy's entire collection of albums and singles and videos he has ever recorded! His entire career is here! The first single! The first show! Everything! How do you have it?!" she kneeled down again and stared dreamily with tear and star filled eyes at the boxes filled with Compact Lacrima Discs (CLD)* carelessly thrown there.

Natsu cocked his head to the side and crossed his arms. "What do you mean? Everyone from Fairy Tail from before the seven years have a similar collection."

Lucy's head turned back to him, doing an almost 180 degrees turn and scaring the hell out of him. "What?" she asked in a dead tone.

"Yeah" he dropped himself beside her and started to fumble with the lacrimas. "Why do you think he is called the Icy _Fairy_? He's the guild's main financial supporter. The bastard's dirty rich and many Fairy Tail mages have been featured in some of his songs and shows. Loke and Erza and Kana did it the most, but now and then Laxus, Ever, Bickslow and Freed would be called too."

While Natsu spoke, Lucy could only stare at him with wide eyes. How was it possible that her favorite artist was so close yet she never knew it? From the beginning of his career, the celestial mage had followed all his activities. This magical musician was her idol! His love filled poems, bittersweet tunes, upbeat melodies, all of it, she loved them all. Many times he was the one to cheer her up when life at home became too bad and lonely with his dream giving songs. During her early teen years she'd constantly imagine she was his beloved he sang so many times about with so much passion and undying love.

"Also" the pink-haired spoke again, "everyone from Fairy Tail received free VIP passes to every show he had or participated as a special guest. They were pretty nice, specially the backstage food. Damn lucky bastard."

"I can't believe I was around for six months of his career and never knew of it!" for no good reason, she started to strangle and shake Natsu.

"But you didn't lose anything! There hasn't been a show since you came around!" he said very difficultly. Somehow he managed to escape her grip and hugged her tight, bringing her face centimeters from his. "Besides, why are we talking about that guy?" he lowered his voice and a good shiver ran up Lucy's spine. "As far as I remember, you promised to give me a celebratory gift for my promotion as soon as you could move without pain."

The blonde shuddered when he bit her ear lightly after speaking and grabbed his vest tightly when a hot hand sneaked up her thigh under her skirt. "Well, that I did" she answered seductively and put a hand on his face. When they were facing each other, their lips crashed together and not much later Natsu had carried his girlfriend to his room and had her gently placed on the bed, him joining her in the next second.

The next day, both walked into the guild hall with the brightest mood ever. It didn't take the others much to realize the couple spent the night busy together. Erza got particularly curious when Lucy sat beside her and plugged a CLD-player on and soon started to hum happily.

"What are you listening to, Lucy?" the scarlet-haired woman asked, trying to see the lacrima's cover.

"My favorite artist! The Icy Fairy! I can't believe Natsu had his whole collection at home and never told me" she rambled staring dreamily at the player and didn't notice the quick gleam of sadness that passed in her friend's eyes before she smiled and put a hand out.

"Let me hear it with you. It's been a while."

Without complain (and who would object the Queen of Fairies, Titania?) she handed one of the earplugs over and both happily listened to their favorite musician.

xxXxXxXxXxXxx

Blood red eyes took in the remains of what once was a grand open theatre, now covered in snow. Zeref wondered where was now the source of great magic power he felt here three months prior. It had been so fast, he barely noticed it, but it was inevitable. Someone had reached a level of power that surpassed anyone he had ever met in his long life, and dare he say, it could rival his own. That thought alone frightened him as much as it excited him.

A sudden gush of wind blew by and he had to close his eyes. Upon opening them, he had a nice surprise for in front of him, some meters away where once stood a beautiful stage, was now standing a dark-haired young woman, unsurprised by her surroundings' state. The black mage smirked.

"What an interesting surprise to see you again and here of all places, so far away from Fiore, Fairy Tail's ice mage, Gray Fullbuster."

Gray closed her eyes and let the corners of her lips be pulled up before turning to face the ancient mage, calm smile still in place and cold amusement illuminating dark blue eyes. "You'll have to excuse me, but I have no memory of us ever meeting, but since you know my name, would you care to tell me about our other encounter?" she asked while walking to him calmly, like she wasn't approaching a mage whose specialty lay in death magic.

"Hm, have you forgotten about me or have you lost your memory all together?" They now stood side by side, each facing the other's opposite direction.

"I have lost my memory as an unfortunate side effect of an ancient spell. Would you tell me, though, the circumstances of our acquaintance? Even without knowing what I did before, I doubt I'd associate myself with a black mage of past times like you. Hm?"

"There you might be right. We were enemies the last time we met. How about we trade some information, then? I tell you how we first met and you tell me how you acquired this level of magic power in so short time."

"Agreed" Gray then turned to look at the other, "what do you say we have this civilized conversation over a nice warm drink? I believe there is a town not too far south from here."

"Sure, why not?"

In another gush of freezing wind, both mages were gone, leaving behind only ruins and snow in the rising sun.

Within minutes, both dark-haired mages found a nice café with tables set on the streets just in front of the store. Each had a cup with steaming tea and was intently looking at the other. Although their outer appearance was that of tranquility, like they were old friends, anyone with strong magic awareness would be able to sense the danger contained between them, what with both mages having their magic ready to act but not a bit of it coming out their bodies, staying right under skin. It was a very delicate and dangerous situation, in which any wrong movement could be fatal.

Calmly, like nothing, Zeref told Gray of the events of Tenrou Island, how he was awaken by Grimore Heart, how he nearly killed some of Fairy Tail mages and how the black dragon Acnologia paid a little visit to them, as a bonus info. While he told his stories, he was curious to how the woman in front of him would react and surprisingly she never changed her facial expression when Fairy Tail was mentioned, like she really didn't remember them at all. He tried mentioning some of their names, the First Master and Natsu, then, at the dragon slayer's mention, he identified an interesting spark in her eyes, but nothing else. On the other hand, Gray told Zeref of waking up in the snowy plains of Iceberg, being momentarily too weak to do anything and how she suddenly summoned the strongest representations of some constellations, all the while having no memory of what was happening but being very conscious of her own magic power. And while the female knew she couldn't trust the man facing her, he seemed to know her and what better way to know oneself than to speak to their enemy? When both were done telling their tales, silence installed between them.

"Allow me to guess one thing, will you?" Gray asked taking a sip from her cup.

"Go ahead."

"You said you had locked your memories away and changed your personality."

"Correct. Are you interested in retaining yours?"

"I am. But that is not the matter I am interested in right now" she said calmly and dark blue locked into blood red. "What I want to know is what you are planning on doing now. For all matters, you going back to your devil-like personality means you dislike humanity and want to be done with it. No?"

Zeref smirked. "Yes. Soon I might give the world a one-sided annihilation and free it from this curse that is called humanity."

"Hmm, so you say" Gray said pensive and crossed her arms, still keeping her pose cool. "What brought you to such decision, though? If you hate humanity so much, there must be a reason. _You_ were human once."

"Well," the man mirrored her action, "humans are stupid. They keep repeating the same mistakes over and over every new era. Eventually it becomes annoying and I just don't want to see it all repeat again. That aside, why should I want to live in a world that has rejected me? As soon as I am recognized, people want nothing but to get rid of me."

"Does that mean you are simply rebelling like a child throwing a tantrum for nor being liked by his friends?" His eyebrow ticked. "Have you never tried finding someone to spend time with?"

"And you believe such 'someone' exists? That is unlikely. That aside, why do you keep sounding like you are defending humanity? For all we both know, it had given you nothing but pain" Zeref pointed out and amusedly watched a cold glint grow in her eyes. "You may not have memories, but you did mention you still have a history of feelings that goes back to a human. Why keep living among these creatures that know nothing but to make others suffer for their own pleasure?"

"Why indeed? Maybe it could be because as useless and fool as they come, humans are interesting. And though I have yet to see a real good side on them in this life, I am curious. I want to see them live on and prove you wrong, even if a small group."

"What are you saying, then?"

Gray leaned her body forward over the table and stared intently at his face. The tranquil atmosphere was broken and their magic slowly started to seep out their pores. "I am not letting you do as you please and destroy humanity. I am going to stop you."

"So, game on."

If there was anybody watching the pair of dark-haired mages talk, they would think they were a couple having some kind of argument for the intensity of their gazes. And then, they would be surprised, not necessarily in a good way, that in a blink of the eye they were gone. The seats they occupied would be cold, like never used, but the cups they drank from were still on the table, warm. It would be a mystery for years to come. But there wasn't anyone keeping close attention to them.

After an hour long chase game with Zeref, Gray landed at the outskirts of a town. Looking around she tsc-ed and turned to the town. A chase game between two mages capable of using teleportation magic was hard to accompany and ever harder to finish, and now the woman was left to mentally curse him and plan her next actions until the man gave any sign of life again.

Entering the town, Gray found out it wasn't a big place, but not so small either. People walked around for no reason, working or basically playing in the case of children. Reaching what she thought at the central town square, her ears picked on a nice melody being played on the piano near a small fountain placed right at the middle of the square. Looking that way, she found a young lady with said instrument surrounded by some people watching her curiously and some that continued on their way but still glanced the musician's way.

_Another day quietly passes again  
>I am just living like that<br>I can't do anything  
>Only memories remain<em>

There, Gray felt something curious, a feeling something else should be there complementing the melody. On a whim, she created a violin of ice and joined the girl playing, surprising not only her but her audience as well. More and more people stopped to listen and enjoy the music after the new addition. The musician turned to the mage and was about to ask something when Gray smiled and shook her head, indicating for them to continue the performance. And the lady complied.

_If only I can love again after time passes  
>It would be nice<em>

_Tears, my memories can't forget you  
>Heart, my memories can't let you go<br>If only I can see you just for one day my love_

_I can't turn things back now  
>Only memories remain<em>

_If only I can approach you after time passes  
>It would be so nice<em>

_Tears, my memories can't forget you  
>Heart, my memories can't let you go<br>If only I can see you just for one day my love_

_I know it's love, even the past days  
>My tears are flowing<em>

Feeling the ending of the song, the mage felt another impulse and opened her mouth. The pianist continued with the lyrics and enjoyed how well their voices played together with this stranger doing impressive vocal tricks she had yet to learn, not once letting go of the violin.

_Tears, my memories can't forget you  
>Heart, my memories can't let you go<br>If only I can see you just for one day my love_

As the last note faded into silence, everyone applauded and the little purse left beside the piano was filled with money very quickly, surprising the musician. After thanking the dissipating crowd, she turned to the mage with a thankful smile on her face.

"Thank you so much! I never had this much profit in a performance before!"

"You are very welcome. But that is a beautiful song, how did you come up with it?" Gray asked while the girl closed the piano.

"Oh! Well, I thought you knew it, since you joined me so perfectly" the other woman commented confused.

"No, it was on impulse. Just felt like it fitted. So you didn't write this song?"

"Haha! There is no way. I'm not that talented. How about I pay you a meal for helping me? Then we can talk better" she offered smiling, pointing a thumb over her shoulder to one of the many food places around them.

"Sure, I am a little hungry anyway."

"By the way, my name is Lina."

"Nice to meet you, Lina. Mine's Gray."

The two ladies found a nice and cozy restaurant and enjoyed a nice warm meal to fight against the winter's chills. In the middle of it, they resumed their prior conversation.

"That song is called Ice Flower and is one of the Icy Fairy's most famous ones. In an interview, he said it was dedicated to his late family, but I personally believe it was also dedicated to a lover of his."

"An ice flower from an icy fairy. That sounds interesting. And you, miss, sound like a fan of his. Why is that?" Gray asked playfully and Lina laughed.

"I grew up listening to his songs. He was pretty popular seven years ago and to this day you can find a lot of people that still listen to him. His career officially started in the beginning of X782 and was a huge success, but due some circumstances that involved in him being an active member of a magical guild in Fiore, in the end of X784 he disappear. Seven years later, around July this year, there were rumors of him coming back but not many months later he was killed. I was so sad when I read the news" Lina dropped her head on the table and mock cried there, making Gray laugh at her antics.

"Well, look at this! It seems to me someone had a fan-crush on her idol!"

"I can't help it, Gray!" Lina rose and hit the table top with her palms. "If you saw him you'd do too! Not only was he very talented at singing. He wrote all the lyrics and melodies of his songs, he could play any instrument and even make double tuned voice! Not to mention he was a strong mage and damn, what can I say about that perfect god-made sculpture he called his body! Seriously, it was perfect and he even showed it off walking around places half-naked! What I wouldn't give to have him in front of me like that…" she finished with a dreamy air around her, slumping back on her seat.

"You were… About eleven years old when he was around, right?" Gray asked cautiously and received a cheerful 'Yup!' from her as answer and burst into laughter. "I don't even know what to say to that! This is so hilarious!"

The two ladies talked and laughed some more. The table was cleared by a waitress and they were given a mug of hot chocolate each. When they were finished and about to leave, Gray had another question.

"By the way, Lina, where exactly are we? I am kind of lost and want to go to Fiore. There is something over there I must check."

Putting on a pensive look, the musician turned to the back wall of the restaurant and made her new friend follow her. "Here," she put a finger on the map hanging there, "we are in Troa Town, in the southeast of Bosco*. To go to Fiore you'll need to take a two-day long train ride. If you want, we can work together to earn some more money for you to travel."

"That will not be necessary, Lina. Thank you for the offer, though, and sorry for leaving you on your own so soon."

"What, it wasn't like we had an agreement or anything to begin with. Though I must say I liked that performance. Hope to be able to do that again sometime" Lina laughed the other's apology off and winked at the end.

They exited the restaurant and Lina had to ask in curiosity, "How are you going then, if not by train? You don't hope to do that on feet in winter, do you? You'll freeze to death!"

Gray smirked at the other. "Well, first of, I'm never bothered by the cold, I actually feel comfortable in it. And second, this is how I plan to travel" she reached for the belt under her coat and pulled a silver key with intricate carvings of the upper body of a winged horse at one tip. "Open, High Gate of the Winged Horse, Pegasus!"

In a flash of light, said creature appeared beside the girls and drew gasps from Lina and every passerby. The celestial spirit bowed to the mage and nuzzled her neck. "Milady, what can I do for you?" he asked in a loving way.

"You are a mage" Lina stared at her before going rampant. "You are a celestial spirit mage who can also do ice creation magic! How?!"

"I'm lucky?" Gray chuckled and turned to address her other companion. "I'm sorry to bother you with this task but could you give me a ride? We are two days away from Fiore by train and I rather not waste that much time."

Pegasus tilted his head and inquired, "Why don't you simply teleport there?"

"Don't you want to spend time with me?" she countered back with a straight face and the spirit sweat-dropped.

He sighed in defeat and instructed, "Hop on."

"Thank you, Pegasus. Tell me what you want afterwards and I'll make sure to make your wish come true!" Gray mounted the celestial creature and turned back to a still gaping Lina. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Lina. I sincerely hope to see you again. And do continue with your lovely performances!"

Pegasus then jumped into the air and shot upwards. On the floor, Lina snapped out of her shock and started to wave at the retreating figures in the sky. "Good-bye, Gray! It was my pleasure of meeting you! Come back here one day to play with me again!"

Flying just under the clouds at breakneck speed, Pegasus spoke, "What now?"

"We go after Leo. I need to question him some things. And then I'll go Zeref-hunting. That guy pisses me off."

* * *

><p><strong>NA Time!**

**The nine spirits at the beginning of the chapter are, of course, of Silver Keys. Most of those constellations are found in the North Hemisphere and I was trying to keep them all strictly circumpolar. For those who know Saint Seiya, you'd probably think, why not make Pegasus, Cygnus, Andromeda and Draco bronze keys? Well, my answer is that their concept it too cool to be bronze keys, haha! Besides, we don't even know if there are bronze keys in Fairy Tail universe and one Cygnus Spirit already appeared in the anime (filler spoiler, not sorry at all). Concerning this Cygnus Spirit, since in the anime it is themed like Swan Lake, because seriously, that guy screamed ballet and one of the black swans, I decided to do a little mix of it and the story behind the constellations. So, our Cygnus here, named Orpheu, is like the prince of Sawn Lake but named after the poet and musician from the Greek mythology. Which brings us to everybody's appearances. I based them all (or most of them) on their Greek myths and since I made them, like, royalty among their classes of spirits, I wanted them to have a more ethereal and imposing image. And since we don't know if that is true or not and no one said it couldn't happen, I took advantage of this loose end.**

**Gray knowing the spirits name is going to be explained when she talks to Loke, whenever that happens.**

**Crux name here is how he is called in Brazil. Actually we call Crux 'Cruzeiro do Sul', which literally means South Cross. The reason is because 'Crux' is actually the generic name of the spirits of this constellation and I thought it would be nice! Also, the others whose names are different of their constellation, also refers to the Greek myths they are most associated with.**

**When I put Wendy in the group to have dirty thoughts about Kana, Loke and Gray's relationship, I imagine her being around thirteen to fourteen, so it is reasonable. And I seriously don't understand how sometimes Hiro Mashima-sensei can make eight-year-old kids behave so seriously almost maturely and then have eleven-year-old kids look like they are five… And yeah, I mean the time Natsu came to the guild and I thought he was five or seven year old…**

**For everyone who expected an interesting chapter about the S-class Exam… Sorry! I just didn't have the inspiration to do it and it wouldn't fit that well in the story either, I mean, nothing really happened on it and it would be mostly a one side beating. If, though, there are many people that would like to read a complete scene about it, leave your wishes on a review and I'll try to make it into an omake for the next chapter or even a mini-chapter before the next one.**

**Did anyone think I was going to put a Lucy finding out about Natsu and Gray scene here? Haha, sorry, guys, but that will not happen anytime soon.**

***CLD – I don't know how it works in Fairy Tail world, but Laxus have those headphones of his, so there must be something like a CD-player or iPods or whatever other music player device in that world! I don't know if it was ever mentioned, but either way I'm making it that these CLD are like CDs but made of lacrima and magic and yada yada.**

**If I told you guys I once planned to make a ZerefXGray pairing story out of this you'd believe? It just struck me once that maybe, with the right words and person, Zeref could change or be 'controlled' and stop his world-destroying things. I think that could be a very interesting couple, especially with Gray's temper and both being on the same level of magic.**

***Troa Town is a completely made up town in Bosco I created out of nowhere with no references whatsoever.**

**Lastly, what do you guys think of it? I mean, I did mention in the first chapter there was gender-bending here. If you didn't realize it was going to happen to Gray, not my fault. There is one thing about Gray's appearance I wanted to comment on, though. Mostly, the 'nice girls' in Fairy Tail all have big boobs. That is one thing of shounen manga/anime that pisses the hell of me. Physically, there is no way a girl that active would have natural breasts the big! It makes no sense! Breasts are body fat! The more you exercise the less you have it. What's wrong with men, seriously! And they are so annoying and get so much in the way to moving, specially fighting! I have experience with kung fu and have small breast and still found it annoying! I just can't understand these people logics… Even for men… So! I made Gray out of what I thought he'd look better as a girl. As I had mentioned last chapter, I wanted to give Gray an androgynous figure, so I had to have him as her with small boobs. Also, I am keeping his height, so Gray is now a pretty tall woman (taller than Natsu, hihi!) with gorgeous sportive and feminine body. I plan to make some illustrations soon too, though that might still take a while.**

**And as always, your thoughts are always nice to hear!**

**~Atsuko Uehara, 9/December/2014.**


	4. Chapter 4

**I am so SORRYYY!**

**I had planned to upload this chapter before christmas, but then I got trapped with some Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfictions, then I went on family vacations to the beach and post-poned everything until now and also got myself in a bad case of writer's block in the next chapter T-T I am sorry, guys! Anybody disappointed in me?**

**To compensate, here we have a nice and long sequence of flashbacks featuring chibi!Gray! Yay! And of course, to everybody who reviewed, follows and favored this story, you guys are much appreciated.**

**_Warning! Spoiler alert! Warning!_**

**_If you haven't read the manga and follow Fairy Tail by the anime only, from this chapter on there will be spoilers! So you either risk losing the surprise in the anime or read the manga (because I'm not telling anybody not to read this story, obviously! Hahahah!)._**

**And soft-hearted people, have your tissues ready. This one is a very emotional chapter. I almost cried while writing it, the only reason I didn't is because I got distracted every half-scene… Yeah, I'm a procrastinator…**

**I took the song and its translated lyrics from here: www. youtube watch?v=7uHYNOiiHkc**

**And I have no idea what novel it is from, but it's beautiful and though a love song, I really think it fits the situation we have here. Hope you'll enjoy it too.**

* * *

><p><strong>04 – It's cold <strong>_**by Song Ji Eun**_

After flying for a little more than an hour, Gray's attention dispersed from the way ahead and she looked down to the land so far away from them. She eyed the desert area, looking for anything that could explain the strange feeling of something calling out for help. Scanning the nearly endless ocean of sand, she found a little patch of green with a shining dot.

"Pegasus, please go down here."

The winged horse started to do as asked but commented still, "We are still many hours from our goal, though, Milady."

"I know" the woman frowned, keeping her eyes strained to see if she could identify what exactly was it she saw and lock on the strong presence under them. "But I think I felt life in danger down here somewhere. Can you find any civilization?"

Pegasus made his way down carefully to not harm his mage with the atmosphere pressure* change in a hard drop and looked at the land with his sharp eyes. "That shining dot, I think it is a village. But it is covered by something to make it shine" he answered thoughtfully.

"Covered? Like a layer of glass or some kind of crystal?"

"Or ice."

Silently they finished their way down and the celestial spirit landed on top of an irregular small mountain. Gray quickly dismounted and stared down. Indeed, the land, a whole village and nearby forest were covered in ice. She crouched and touched the hard surface with her hand, getting a surprising response from it. It felt like the ice wanted to tell her something and had a darker vibe to it than natural ice and even magic ice and far behind the torrential presence of cold, a diminishing source of warmth was trying to break free, a source really strong and also from past times. Getting up again, she glanced over at the rest of the place and found out that some of the ice monuments around them were actually humans of colossal sizes.

"Milady?" the celestial spirit asked curiously keeping close watch over his companion and the emotions that flashes on her face.

"Here we have a kind of magic you don't see every day" she commented and added to Pegasus confused tilt of head. "This ice is from a slayer, a demon slayer, more precisely."

"How do you know?"

"Huh" she chuckled. "It has the same vibe as Zeref's magic. It feels like a demon's work, but I can also identify its properties to fight them. And we are also standing on the empty space that was once occupied by a huge flame."

The winged horsed jumped in the air and bristled when his mage started to laugh at him. "Don't laugh, Milady! Anyone who isn't fire natured would react this way!"

"I know, sorry! But it's still funny, I can't help it!" she stopped laughing and smiled at him. "Anyway, I want to take a look around before doing anything to this place. Join me?"

"Of course" he approached her and let her mount him. When she was securely seated on his back, he added before flying off to the village in a slow pace. "But I want a nice and long grooming sometime afterwards."

Gray smiled and petted his neck. "Wish granted. As soon as we are done with the travel, okay?"

"Alright."

Pegasus didn't ask and neither did he have the need to ask why the mage wanted to do something about the village's situation. It was just a little something that became clear to all spirits that Gray Fullbuster was a kind soul for how strong she was. They have seen it before, a glimpse of what her full power could do, if summoning nine High Silver Spirits was something to go by, and yet, may it be due her situation of memory loss or her very nature, they couldn't have asked for a better owner for their keys, someone kind enough to treat the spirits like equals and give up three months of her time to spend a single day in the company of all her new friends.

So they flew for a while, going through what they assumed were the main streets of the village and over many frozen hairy heads, only to find everything frozen by the same magical ice of their landing point. With a light pet on his flank, he flew them back to the base of the frozen flame. Their findings were pretty simple: every being confined here was alive and had just to be broken free. Upon suggestion, the winged horse stomped on the ice at one point of their wandering in the forest area that was frozen and only got a small crack even if the celestial spirit had used nearly all his strength. From that Gray could make her conclusions without fear, it need some magical manipulation to come out.

Standing in front of the mountain of ice, she raised her arm to touch the cold surface, but just before doing so, two presences made themselves known behind her. When the mage turned, intrigued as to why a human and a beast would be together, Pegasus was already glaring at a raven-haired dark skinned woman and a huge male beside her.

"Huh, and I thought only people of Fairy Tail were this annoying" the woman said with venom dripping from her voice, but looking into her eyes, Gray raised an eyebrow. That woman had quite a few problems going on in her life, but that was one being she was not interested in helping, after all, personal matters were not of her concern, not when the person with trouble was not important to her.

"Not that it matters to me anyhow" the celestial spirit mage said dismissively and locked her gaze on the male, face completely cold.

In a blink of the eye, she had thrown a narrow wave at him and pulled it back then forward again using the ice covering the ground. The big man moved like a ragdoll and fell backwards with a wide hole in his middle, dead. For that split second, though, flashes of images ran in Gray's mind and took her concentration away but she quickly returned to the present. It wouldn't do to be distracted with an enemy still nearby and a village full of living people waiting to be rescued.

The dark-skinned woman looked at her partner surprised, how come he was killed that easily? For damn's sake, he wasn't even human! With cold sweat trailing down the side of her face, she turned back to her opponent only to find her with her back turned her way and hands on the frozen flame. She felt like being defeated by that damned scarlet Titania all over again, the humiliation of being looked down upon, or in this case, to be ignored like she presented no harm.

"Don't you turn your back on me like I am nothing!" she yelled and threw a spell at Gray.

The fair skinned female never flinched, turned or got hit.

There was a little explosion and the attacking mage waited expectantly, but when it cleared she was devastated. Pegasus was standing between the two females with his wings smoking a little from receiving the full force of the attack and glaring coldly at the human who dared to attack his mage, aside from the smoke, there was no trace of him being hit at all.

"If you really want to fight, go look for the one you truly want to fight with" Gray said calmly, not bothered by the attack that could kill a normal person, even mage. "We have no business with each other."

With the other woman staring unbelievingly at her, Gray focused her senses on the ice and slowly, like a rippling wave, the ice covering the land vanished into steam. Trusting her safety to the celestial spirit, she walked forward onto the altar ahead and met a small flame barely reaching her knees in height. She put a hand in it and closed her eyes. There, she felt it, the call from before. It was a hot voice, powerful yet it cared, cared for the people living around it. She reached into her core and pulled forth the blazing feel of great flames and in a couple seconds, the tiny fire expanded into a massive blaze visible from outside the defrosting village. Calmly she walked out the fire, completely unharmed and eyed the other woman blankly before petting Pegasus' head.

"Just go find your purpose in life and what is the true meaning for your magic. I wish you well" Gray said coolly and sent the winged horse back to his world and teleported out of there, leaving behind a still stunned mage to stare at the space in front of her still processing what had just happened while the village finished to thaw and confused giants slowly woke up minutes before a group of four mages and two cats came into scene.

On her instantaneous way to her new destination, Gray couldn't help but think about the images that invaded her mind upon intimate contact with the ice.

xxXxXxXxXxXxx

Silver stared sadly at the small wood cross he had made years ago in the middle of snow covered ruins of what once was a beautiful lively town. He had been kneeling there for a while, staring longingly at the two names he carved onto the cross, praying for the two most important people of his life.

Being so distracted by his emotions didn't let the sudden presence behind him go unnoticed, though.

"You are Silver Fullbuster, one of Tartaros' Kyuukimon and an ice demon-slayer" a female smooth voice stated at his back.

The man grimaced and answered with a smirk, back still facing her. "That would be me alright. How do you know of my last name? I don't recall telling many people that little piece of information."

"I know that because…" she trailed off and Silver had to arch an eyebrow. He was about to ask her when she continued with a question of her own. "Are you my father?"

"Sorry, miss" he chuckled. "But I don't have any daughters."

"But you have a son named Gray Fullbuster, born in X766 here, in this town when it still stood."

Frowning, Silver stood up and turned to face her. "Listen here, miss, if you are planning on taking advantage of me using my son, don't even bother! He isn't alive… anymore…" His dark blue eyes widened upon contact with the person he was talking to.

In front of him, was a young woman he could describe as the combination of his and his late wife's features, or as a female version of his son. She had their trademark raven hair and dark blues eyes, pale skin and strong expression on handsome face. Her form also radiated power, incredible magic power that surpassed his by lengths.

"Who are you?" he asked with trembling voice, still in shock.

The woman sighed and looked away from him. "So far as I know, I am a human formed by pure magic that has been conscious for three months in Earthland-time and named Gray Fullbuster. Someone also mentioned my being part of a magic guild of Fiore that goes by the name of Fairy Tail."

"Human formed by pure magic?" he questioned in confusion then contorted his face into a scowl. "Even if it was the case and it changed your body, it doesn't mean you are my son! I will let you go this time, but to not claim to be Gray ever again. He is dead. Has been so for four months."

Silver walked towards and past the woman with large steps angrily. When he was passing her, though, she grabbed his hand in a firm grip. The man was about to turn and demand she released him when she opened her mouth. The words that came out, accompanied by the blowing wind only struck deep in his heart.

_When you're in pain from love, tears are the medicine  
>You have no faults, but you keep saying that you're sorry<br>Don't cry for me  
>It's alright, I understand it all<em>

The woman that called herself Gray sang the lines only he, Mika and his son knew. Her touch was cold even through his glove and that cold brought up memories of his that were safely locked into his heart and tears to his eyes.

_The man hugged his coat tighter around his broad shoulder and jogged the rest of the paved road towards a small two store house among the many others that littered the streets of a town in Isvan. He had a huge silly grin plastered on his face and a small package safely secured against his chest. The tall male quickly fumbled with the doorknob, entered the house and closed the door behind his back. He took off his thick coat and hanged it, cleaned his boots from any residual snow from outside and skipped upstairs towards the room he shared with the love of his life. _

_At the doorframe, the man first peaked at the inside and his grin widened, eyes shining more than the stars in the sky. On the double bed, his beautiful wife laid with the most radiant calm smile the world has ever seen. Her hair was messy, face tired and looked ready to fall asleep, she was stunning. And most importantly, in her arms, protected from the cold winter wind by a sheet, was their precious baby sleeping soundly with tiny cute hands clutching the fabric, face peaceful and thick mop of dark hair on his head, just like both parents._

_The man quietly approached the most beautiful sight he had ever seen in his life. He seated as lightly as possible beside the woman and embraced her with an arm and with his free hand reached for the baby but stopped, his fingers just above the pale skin._

"_He won't break, you know. Your son is strong" Mika said softly and watched marveled as father and son touched for the first time. _

_Silver trailed a finger over his child's little nose and he scrunched his face, one tiny hand coming up to take away the offending appendage. But even with the bigger finger brought away from his nose closer to his tiny slightly parted mouth the infant didn't release it. Upon realizing it, the father chuckled and used his middle finger to poke at the soft cheek, making the little one frown again._

"_Oh, stop it, Silver" the mother laughed quietly. "Or my little precious treasure will give you hell."_

_As if on cue, big dark blue eyes opened and looked curiously at his surrounding, stopping at the new face that appeared in front of him. Silver looked warmly at the mirror pair of his eyes and played with his son's nose with his free finger._

"_Hello there, little one. I am your papa" the man said softly, afraid if his voice was loud it would irritate the baby. _

_The baby boy made some muffled noises and used his other hand to hold onto the other offending piece of meat annoying him. Both parents smiled at the cute sight. Silver didn't really mind his son was using his fingers as toys but when he stuck them into his small mouth, the man let out a playful 'Hey!' Beside him, Mika was giggling softly, watching amused how their son seemed to like his father a lot. The male adult playfully pulled on his fingers and was surprised to feel the little one's strong grip on him. His surprise showed clearly on his face and had his wife laughing at him in pure delight. Then he managed to pull away from the tiny hands and regretted the next second._

_The baby started to cry at the top of his lungs, little chubby arms flailing around, trying to get a hold of his toy again._

_Mika hurried to sooth her son swinging him lightly up and down, but it didn't work. The small limbs continued to flail around and they seemed to do so in Silver's direction, who had the most frightened look on his face of his life. Decidedly, the woman turned and put the little boy in her husband's arms and made sure that he was holding their little precious the right way._

_What happened was like magic._

_The baby boy stopped his crying instantly and that innocent curiosity was back on the round face. Silver sweat-dropped at his son's antics but sighed in resignation. "So you like papa?" Big eyes blinked owlish and continued to stare. "Do you have a double personality or are you just a little manipulative cute baby?"_

_Mika slapped her husband on the arm and he turned to her in mock-pain, pouting like a child. This movement of his head made his long earrings dance in the air, and though it was a normal meaningless thing for the adults, it was like the most interesting thing of the world for the little one. His big dark eyes followed the movement of the shining piece until it stopped. When it did, he reached out a hand._

"_Ouch!" Silver cried out when he felt a sudden strong pull on his ear, more specifically his earring. "You are definitely a smart kid, I'll give you that!"_

"_Of course he is!" the woman said proudly. "He is my son!" Said son pulled again on his new object of interest, trying to get a closer look at it. "And it also seems like he shares my taste for shining silver gray pendants."_

_There was a sound none of them had heard before and it came from the little body still playfully pulling on his dad's ear piece. Their son, who had a bright toothless wide smile, had just squealed._

_Both parents stared in shock at the baby boy. They looked at each other than back down again. That was the cutest sound they had ever heard._

"_What made you so happy, my precious?" Mika asked playfully while tickling his face, which provoked some of his ordinary sounds of happiness, but not nearly as pure as that squeal. In uncoordinated reflex, the small one also pulled on his father's silvery again. "Haha! I think he really likes your earring." Another pull._

"_Ouch! Stop that or he'll rip my ear off. But I think it was something you said, love."_

"_Hmm" the mother thought about it. "It happened at the 'shining silver gray pendants' part" another squeal. The parents looked at each other again. "Hmm, pendants?" Pull. "Shining?" Pull. "Silver?" Pull. "It can't be… Gray?" Squeal. "Do you like 'gray' my precious?"_

_The baby tilted his head to the side and made some happy noises again. _

"_Of all things, why are you interested in 'gray'?" Silver asked poking his son on the forehead. The baby only looked at him curiously, as though in question._

_The new family spent some seconds in silence, looking at one another. Then Mika broke it with a chuckle. "Seems to me our little son is one of the smart ones and decided to choose his own name, right Gray?" the baby squealed in delight again turning to his mother._

"_Seriously?" the man asked his son skeptically only to have said son snuggle comfortably into his chest and shut out the world._

"_And it also seems to me he loves his papa very much."_

_This time, Silver had no chance at all for a content smile spread on his lips and his eyes looked adoringly at the small body carefully cradled in his arms. It wasn't only his son that loved him very much, him and his wife also loved their precious baby very much._

_That day was marked forever in Silver's life as the day his son was born and the first snow of that year's winter fell._

_You're such a crybaby  
>How can I let you go if you're so soft?<em>

Silver joined in her singing, hardly believing he was doing it again after so long, this time with the person he had wanted to do so with since he first presented it to his baby child.

"_Daddy!" small and quick steps ran towards the man outside before their owner tripped and fell down on his face on grassy ground. Soon, sniffs and sobbing could be heard and Silver sighed with a small smile on his face._

_The man turned away from his friend, whom he was practicing a little sword fighting with, and went to his two-year-old son. The helped the little boy sit up and petted his thick mop his mother liked to call hair. _

"_There, there, my boy. It wasn't so bad, was it?"_

_Little Gray sniffed some more before shaking his head fiercely and looking up to the man he held above all others. He raised his arms silently in the universal sign to be picked up and pouted. Silver, being the softie he was, complied to his child's request and held him up so they were face to face, that didn't mean, though, that he got up on his feet, he just sat there, back to his waiting sparring partner, who looked at the scene snickering. _

"_Did you need anything from me, my little Gray?"_

_The boy nodded quickly. "Momma asked me to call daddy."_

"_Did she say why?"_

"_Surprise!" Gray exclaimed happily and made his father sigh._

_With a sheepish smile, Silver stood up and turned to his friend and before saying anything, the other man shooed him. "Just go and send my greeting to Mika. The Gods know not to go against that woman nor ignore him" he said pointing to the little boy, who grinned and waved at him. He waved back. "We'll continue later, Silver."_

"_Thank you, my friend."_

_Both parties turned their way away from the grassy clearing at the outskirts of their town. It was one of those days of the year in midsummer the cold gave way to a little warmth in the cold region and let the people living there enjoy a little sun.* _

_Father and son made their way back home, greeting everyone on the way, many times needing to stop for the ladies and even some men talk to the little boy. That was one thing Silver never understood. Their family was pretty average. He was one of the best hunters among the townsfolk and his wife was definitely the best musician in the area, but he still didn't understand what made them so popular or Gray the town's favorite child. The man sincerely believed everybody was exaggerating. _

_Long minutes later, the pair entered their house and walked to one of the back rooms, Mika's sanctuary, how he liked to call it. The woman looked up from her piano board and smiled at the sight of her two favorite males in the world, the smaller happily sitting on the grown up's shoulders. _

"_Hello, my loves" she greeted them._

"_Hello there, my love" Silver kissed the woman's raven hair lovingly. "What surprise did you have for me you made Gray run through half the town?"_

_Mika's smile widened and pride radiated from her whole figure. "It is your son who has a surprise for you, dear husband. Why don't you show daddy what you showed me earlier, sweetie?" she asked her son and the boy nodded enthusiastically. _

_The father let his boy down and watched curiously how he walked to a wooden small instrument and sat behind it. He picked a pair of mallets and started to strike the bars rhythmically, creating a slow and beautiful melody. While the woman had the proudest expression on her face, her husband looked stunned at his baby boy playing a beginners marimba with high precision, concentration and joy. _

_The performance took two minutes to finish and as soon as it did, Mika went to her son and picked him up, spinning him around and praising him for the great work. Silver snapped out his shock and went to his family, he shuffled his son's hair with a wide grin. _

"_That was amazing, my boy! When did you learn to play?"_

_Gray shrugged and hugged his mother around her neck. "I watch momma a lot."_

_Both parents laughed. "You sure like your momma's playing, right?"_

_The boy nodded smiling. "I want to be good like momma one day! And…" he trailed off and hid part of his face in her neck, a cute blush tinting his cheeks red. _

"_And?" she prompted him, having a knowing look in her face._

"_And I want to be strong like daddy to protect everyone" he mumbled with a shy smile, playing with his mother's long tresses. _

_Beside them, Silver couldn't control his face splitting grin when he picked his baby up and almost crushed him against his chest. "And I'm sure you will!"_

_My love is so cold  
>My heart is cold, you can't leave<br>If the good memories all freeze  
>And if it can't be erased, if it doesn't melt, what do I do?<em>

They sang together, voices harmonizing perfectly with her soft and his baritone, and like always, nothing but the wind as melody. An ocean of emotions engulfed both and the grip uniting them tightened, yet they continued to face away from the other.

_Gray was four years old and he could walk, run and jump very well. He could talk, read and write perfectly, even the big words he didn't know the meaning yet. He knew how to play marimba and piano nicely and was learning how to sing and play flute. So he didn't understand why his father wouldn't take him hunting or at least teach him how to fight or even let him watch the practices most of the men did daily. _

"_Why not?!" the boy yelled, stomping his feet on the wooden floor of his house and glaring at his father, who was fastening his coat._

"_I already told you, Gray. You are too young still. When you are old enough, I will personally oversee your training. But until then, no involvement with fighting for you."_

"_That is not fair!"_

"_Yes, it is! Besides, most weapons are bigger than you are. And I don't want to hear any more of it, you hear me" Silver said leaving no place for more arguments. A step away, Mika sighed, that was not the first time they had a fight over Gray not being able to fight, no matter how smart the boy was, because smartness didn't make up for strength, not completely at least._

_The boy lowered his gaze and bit down his lip. Tears started to pool at the corners of his eyes and he dashed into the house, towards his room, without a word. Both parents followed him with their eyes until he was gone and sighed. They had a very stubborn child, stubborn and moody._

"_All of us know why I can't take him with me" Silver commented in a defeated tone. "Even if I wanted to."_

"_Yes, we all do" Mika agreed and approached her husband. "Do well out there and return in one piece, okay?" she kissed him on the cheek cheerfully._

"_My love! Do you trust me that much that I'll be hurt?" the man exclaimed in fake hurt, making his wife giggle._

"_Oh, silly! I say that to remind you that if you do not, I'll be obliged to remember you why I am the chief of this home, good sir" she said playfully poking his chest and smirking mischievously. _

_Silver let out a dramatic defeated sigh and shook his head lightly. "Yes, ma'am. Anything for you, ma'am" then he hugged her tightly and kissed her fully on the lips. "Take care, you and that little stubborn brat we call son."_

"_Of course" Mika giggled. "And you too, my warrior."_

_Silver left the house and walked away to meet with his friends and hunt-mates._

_Meanwhile, Mika locked the door and went to see her child. As expected, the little boy was huddled on his bed with only a bit of his hair sticking out from an opening of the shell of covers. Every now and then, she could hear a hiccup coming from him and smiled contently. Lightly, she sat down and side hugged the weird fluffy egg._

"_You know why he can't take you, right, my Gray?" she asked lightly and received what would be a nod from the soft mass. "Then don't be mad at daddy. He only does that because he cares for you."_

"_But he still could take me to watch his practices. It's not like I'll just rush in between them and get myself hurt for nothing" the little boy's response was muffled and sounded weirdly, but his mother understood him perfectly. And most importantly, she understood he was still mad._

_Later that day, when Silver came back home and went to hug his boy, Gray looked him seriously in the eye, stuck his tongue and walked away. Confused, the man looked at his wife, who only shrugged and went back to finish dinner._

"_Oh boy… Talk about stubbornness."_

_Even the sunlight is cold on days without you  
>Counting with my two hands is not enough<br>For all the things that remind me of you_

Silver tried a look at the woman and turned halfway. She was still facing away, head bowed and her voice was as perfect as how he remembers his wife's being, smooth, well tuned and filled with her emotions. He could see, though, her shoulders trembling a little and her other hand closed into a tight fist.

_It had been a harsh winter and it seemed it would take a little longer than normal for the cold weather to go away. And in the middle of a blizzard, a family of three plus a couple of friend doctors was locked inside the Fullbuster's household. The two medics had just finished patching up both father and son after a long hour and the struggle to get the little boy away from his wounded father. Now, firmly bandaged and taken care of, both males hugged each other in relief._

"_Shh, it's okay now, my little Gray. Everything is going to be okay" Silver tried to sooth his crying son running a comforting hand on the child's back. He felt his son shake his head against his neck and continue to sob._

"_But… But… Daddy got hurt because of me!" Gray cried out, voice coming out strangled and with difficulty. _

"_It's okay, though. See, my boy, I wanted to protect you, that is why I did it. And we are both safe now."_

"_But still! If I wasn't stupid and went out in the beginning of the storm daddy wouldn't need to get hurt!"_

_The man sighed. Earlier that day, a weak snow storm started and against his parents' advice, the seven-year-old went out to play in the snow saying he wanted to test a theory one of the town's scholars had told him. They waited a while, thinking the storm would take longer to pick up, but too soon it evolved into a blizzard and Silver didn't think twice before dashing out of the house and looking for his son. He found the boy on a tree, holding its branches for dear life against the strong wind. On impulse, the man climbed the plant and picked his precious child, who upon realizing the warm and strong arms around him was his father's latched on his neck and wouldn't release him if God asked him to. Silver sighed in relief after he had Gray secured in his arms and moved to climb down, but his foot slipped and they fell. He managed to land half standing, which was not the best of ideas since he damaged his foot and fell on his behind, all the time doing his best to keep the boy safe._

_Gray heard his father's groan of pain and started to frantically ask what was wrong, because his daddy was the strongest man he ever knew and nothing could hurt him, so something must be really wrong. When the man wouldn't respond, he heard voices shouting and some of their friends came to them, quickly helping Silver back to his feet and walking them the way back home. On the way, the child heard one of the men say Silver had hurt his leg terribly and needed some medical care immediately. _

_They arrived home to a very worried Mika and were guided to the bedroom, where the boy finally got a glimpse of his father's injury and blanched. The man's right foot was twisted in a weird angle slightly, but he knew it was bad. He didn't pay attention to the scratches he had all over his face and hands that were bleeding faintly. His daddy was hurting!_

_Two of the town's best medics came rushing into the room with Mika at some point and started to care for Silver's foot, which was basically sprained from landing bad, very bad. The process of putting it back to place hurt more than it was complicated, but it had to be put in a cast for safety reasons and the man was to be off that limb for the rest of the week. The other minor wounds were quickly taken care of through Gray's persistence on not letting go of his father. One of the medics even commented his grip was worse than glue, but with Mika's help they managed and as soon as he was dimmed fine and released from his mother's lap, he flew back to his father's side saying 'sorry' repeatedly and that 'it was my fault daddy got hurt'._

"_Come on, Gray. Stop saying that. It wasn't your fault. It was an accident, could've happened with anyone and at anytime."_

_The boy shook his head in denial again and repeated his ranting all over again. Seeing there was no way of changing the boy's mind, Silver sighed and let him cry until he was too tired._

_Almost an hour later, Gray quieted down and sniffed many times, rubbing his small hands on his face to clear some of the tears. His father looked at him then and smiled. _

"_Hey, my little Gray" the boy looked up, still sniffing. "Good to know you still like me" he said playfully._

_Looking away and pouting, the child answered, "I never stopped liking daddy" he mumbled and the man looked truly surprised. Silver remembered after their first major argument about him not teaching his son how to fight the boy hardly talked to him or looked at him anymore, and that happened almost three years prior. "Sorry I was mean, daddy."_

"_It's okay, my boy" he hugged his son carefully but tightly. "I'm happy you are talking to daddy again, though!" _

_At that moment Mika entered the room, but stood at the doorway, silently watching her favorite males making peace._

"_Remember that day, not too long ago when you played to me for the first time?" Silver suddenly asked merrily._

"_But that was years ago!" Gray answered nearly outrageously._

"_Was it?"_

"_Yes!"_

"_Haha! My bad! It is just it didn't seem to me that long you were two years old."_

"_Daddy!"_

_The woman smiled warmly at their friendly banter and turned away, giving father and son some privacy she knew they needed at the moment._

"_But you know what?" she still heard her husband asking their child energetically._

"_What?"_

"_This time, I have a surprise for you! Since that day I asked your momma to teach me something and I have been practicing ever since, but I'm still not as good as you!"_

"_A surprise?"_

"_Yes!"_

_From the staircase, Mika listened to her husband singing, a little off key, but with all his emotions a song they have been working on for the past months with happy tears trailing down her pale cheeks and the happiest smile since their little fight years ago. _

_Don't smile for me  
>Because I know how hard it is for you<br>You're such a fool  
>How can you leave if you're so worried about me?<em>

Silver pulled on her arm slightly, slowly shortening the distance between them. She wouldn't turn to face him but that didn't stop the man from putting his free hand on her shoulder, tears still streaming down his face and confusion but happiness in his eyes.

_Everything everywhere was in chaos. The ground trembled, houses shook and people desperately tried to find somewhere safe, be it inside their houses or somewhere out the town, but the search was futile. After all, how do you find a place safe enough with a giant demon destroying your town so effortlessly with a single breath?_

_Silver hurriedly pulled his eight-year-old son to a secret underground compartment in the living room and kneeled in front of him, heart constricted by the fear etched in his small face._

"_Dad! What is happening?"_

"_I need you to listen carefully to me, Gray" Silver said hurriedly grabbing the kid's shoulders and locking his dark eyes with his son's dark ones. "The whole town is under attack and it is a demon! A huge and very powerful demon, called Deliora."_

"_But you can defeat it, right, dad? You are strong!"_

_The man shook his head with a grimace. "No, Gray. This demon is too powerful. Only powerful magic can defeat it and no one in our town deals with magic. So listen well now!" he continued quickly before the boy could say anything. "I need you to stay here. This place is safe, you'll be okay here. Do not get out no matter what you hear outside, understand?"_

"_But, dad! What of you and mom?!"_

"_Don't worry" he smiled sadly. "We will find another place that is safe. Don't worry about us. Now, stay here and don't get out. You understand?" Gray nodded with tears coming down his big eyes. "Good boy. Come here" they hugged and Silver kissed his forehead. "Always remember: your mom and I love you more than anything. Well meet soon."_

"_I love you too, dad! You and mom!"_

"_I'll tell her that. Now stay there quietly."_

_Gray nodded again and sat down hugging his knees while his father closed the lid over his head so he was hidden and turned. Just outside their front door, Mika stared fearfully at the giant monster slowly approaching them. Silver grabbed her hand and they looked at each other._

"_He is safe. And told me to tell you he loves you."_

_Hot tears pooled in her eyes before trailing down her cheeks. "My sweet baby!" she cried into her husband's chest. _

"_He is going to be okay, Mika. Remember, it's our son we are talking about. That kid is strong" She said with a comforting hand on her head, but he was in as many tears as his wife. _

_A bigger tremor not far away from the couple told them the monster was nearby and they didn't have much time. They shared one last kiss and waited, knowing the demon would attack their way next. And it didn't take long._

_Deliora shot a beam and the force of the wind it caused blew them away. They tried to hold onto the other but their hands slipped and each flew one way. Silver felt his body smash against crumbling walls and fall hard on the floor. Struggling to open his eyes, he tried to feel his wife anywhere nearby, already knowing the chances were the smallest. When the man managed to look around, he found Mika's body sprawled among debris of stone, eyes wide open staring lifelessly into space and a forming river of blood running down on the paved floor._

"_No… MIKA!"_

_Silver's shout was covered by Deliora's next roar and attack, which sent another gush of wind around and lifted blocks of houses and brought down many others._

_My love is so cold  
>My heart is cold, you can't leave<br>If the good memories all freeze  
>And if it can't be erased, if it doesn't melt, what do I do?<em>

_Just turn around and go now  
>Because if you hesitate, I might hold onto you<br>Don't even brush past me, don't run into me  
>Because I might run to you and hug you<em>

Gray finally turned her body to face the man but kept her face down, hair shadowing her eyes, but leaving enough of her face out for him to see the tears dropping from her chin onto the snow.

_Silver regained his conscience but everything was fuzzy. He felt his body was moving, but didn't know how or why. The last thing he remembered was being hit by Deliora's attack and there was no chance he could've survived that. _

_A long time passed until he understood what was happening. He died but someone, a demon, another fucking demon resurrected him and was now using his body for the purposes of a magic guild made of demons. _Just how wonderful could life, or post-life be?

_Little by little, he took control of his body and learned magic, specifically magic to kill demons: demon slaying magic. He became strong and rose into the ranks of the Dark Guild Tartaros, creating strange relationships with the demons he called colleagues. He earned the liberty to go around the world doing as he liked whenever not under direct orders from Mard Gear and killed as many demons as they crossed his path so long they were not directly associated with his guild. All that he did with only one thought in mind: eradicate the world of these foul creatures that caused him much pain and took his family away from him._

_I only hope and hope for you  
>Even if you know my heart, don't come to me<br>Even if I love you again  
>Because I might give you pain, I might give you tears<br>I'm afraid_

_Your memories are colder_

At last, she looked up and they looked each other in the eyes, recognition passing in them before leaving to be filled with happiness and longing. They crashed into a tight hug. Silver held his son he thought he had lost twice now turned into a beautiful woman, as strange as that sounded, too happy to have his child in his arms again, face half-buried into her hair, smelling the same wintery perfume he always felt. Gray embraced the man she now knew was her father, the first man that meant something in her life, the man that had a huge role in the first part of her lost memory, him who brought with his presence eight years of her past life, feeling surprisingly secure in his arms even if she knew she was way more powerful than him.

In a miracle, father and child held each other in the middle of ruins in the middle of a snow covered place in the middle of winter. Two people that were supposed to be dead. And two people, that after losing their meaningful ones became masters of ice.

* * *

><p><strong>NA time!**

**I really, really wanted to have some Fairy Tail (other) mages screen time here… But it just happened! Fuck, those memories just asked to be written and wouldn't stop and were just huge! So yeah, a full Fullbuster only chapter! **

**By the way, anyone liked baby-Gray here? I know I did. Cute little things like stories chibis are so… CUTE! xD And a little spoiler here: I plan on having another chibi around faaaar ahead in the story. Will you stick around to see it? ;)**

**Now some real notes!**

**It was never mentioned where exactly is located the Sun Village. So I presumed it was somewhere in the desert in Fiore. No one can blame me if I was wrong! But if I was, do tell me… Not that I'll do much about it though…**

**The calling Gray felt about the village was the same as Natsu did in the manga, it was Atlas Flame. Let's just say Gray is kind of overpower now and a dragon (or remains of one) are very entwined with magic, so yeah, she can feel it with her magic.**

***I'm not sure if that actually happens. I know that after diving too deep, you cannot come up too quickly or the pressure change will mess with your body, create some nitrogen bubbles or something and you'll be basically out of it like in a drunken or drugged way, like reeeaaly high. Or something like that. I don't know if, like, skydiving faster than freefalling could cause a person any physiological damage, so… If anyone knows about it, tell me! That is a detail I'd like not to have mistaken.**

**About Gray being able to talk so well at the age of two, well… That is actually because I don't know how to write baby/young children speech. So let's just assume he was an early talker and learned quickly or just imagine him speaking with the classic baby accent and bad articulation of words xD**

***I also don't know if in the area Gray lived, in summer snow would give way and grass would grow, so since it's my story and it makes sense to me that at least during one season there would be productive land, it happens here.**

**It also wasn't mentioned how Gray's life was before Ur, or how life in Isvan was like. So I played it my way and had their town have a traditional hunting party and Silver being part of them. Why? Because it's cool. And a way to obviously show strength.**

**And just as a last thing… After re-reading the chapter, I realize the song actually has more to do with their current situation, I mean, Gray and Silver's meeting after seventeen years, they hardly knowing the other, one knowing there were high chances of them hurting the other or being hated by the other and it definitely does not go well with a child of seven years… But, oh well! Initially that was the plan, the song was supposed to relate to the present, and it does, but I need something from the past to shock Silver and bound these two, so it'll have to do. Sorry for the lame excuse. I promise next chapter will be better.**

**Comments are appreciated as always!**

**~Atsuko Uehara, 15/January/2015.**


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